Vice President-elect Joe Biden expects that his oldest son Beau, who has been on a tour of Iraq with his Army National Guard unit, will be in Washington for Inauguration Day next Tuesday.

“God wiling and the creek not rise, as my grandfather would say, yes, I hope he’s here on inauguration. He has leave on Inauguration Day,” Biden said Friday outside the Senate, where he had just attended the swearing-in of his successor as senator from Delaware.

“I expect him (Beau) to be with me from early in the morning till late that night. I know he goes back shortly thereafter to Iraq,” Biden told reporters, adding that he was “looking forward” to seeing his son.

Biden’s son deployed to Iraq late last year. He is a captain in the 261st Signal Brigade of the Delaware Army National Guard.

He is also Delaware’s attorney general,  the state’s top law enforcement officer, and he introduced his father at the Democratic National Convention last year. There has been media speculation that Beau would run in 2010 to replace the elder Biden in the U.S. Senate. 

Meanwhile Biden’s longtime aide, Ted Kaufman, was sworn in to the Senate seat Friday by Vice President Dick Cheney, in one of Cheney’s last official acts before leaving office next week.

“He’s been my best friend for years and years and  years,” Biden said of Kaufman. “He’s going to be a great senator.”

Biden, a seven-term senator whose stepped down from that post Thursday, declared that he would miss the Senate “more than you can imagine.”

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Photo credit: Reuters/Mike Segar (Biden with son, Beau, at Democratic Convention in August)