Texas Southern University’s Board of Regents said on Friday that the only finalist to become the historically black university’s president is John Rudley, currently the interim president of the University of Houston.

According to the Houston Chronicle, the regents voted, 9 to 0, in favor of naming Mr. Rudley as the sole candidate for the job. State law requires the regents to wait 21 days before making his appointment final.

Mr. Rudley succeeds Priscilla D. Slade, who was fired in April 2006 in the midst of a spending scandal. A jury hearing Ms. Slade’s trial on charges arising from her spending record deadlocked in October. She is to be retried this spring.

In the 1980s, Mr. Rudley was Texas Southern’s chief financial officer and internal auditor. He later worked for the U.S. Department of Education and the Tennessee Board of Regents. —Lawrence Biemiller