Two of the largest senior creditors in Tribune Co.’s bankruptcy case filed a plan of reorganization in Delaware bankruptcy court Friday, providing an alternative solution to the management plan that has been in place since earlier this year.

The move makes allies out of two distressed debt hedge funds, Angelo, Gordon & Co. and Oaktree Capital Management, that had until recently been at odds with each other. And it comes in advance of a court-ordered mediation that is scheduled to begin Sept. 26.

The filing said the Oaktree-Angelo plan is designed to let the company exit bankruptcy without first resolving the legal tangle that has arisen around the company’s ill-fated 2007 leveraged buyout. Some of those claims would be put into what’s known as a litigation trust, meaning they would resolved through litigation over a longer period of time. Others might be released as a condition of the plan.

The goal of the court-ordered mediation is to resolve those issues consensually.

In a statement filed with the plan, the Oaktree-Angelo group said it remained “100% committed to a successful mediation process.” It said it filed its own plan as an alternative if the mediation process fails, to “minimize the harm, disruption, and value destruction that would occur in the event that the mediation does not produce a consensual resolution.”

Tribune Co.’s management, in a note to employees late Friday afternoon, acknowledged the Oaktree-Angelo group’s move but said it hopes mediation succeeds.

Chief Executive Randy Michaels and Chief Operating Officer Gerry Spector said that if the mediation process fails, “the general approach contained in the Oak Tree Plan may provide the next best alternative.”