The preemptive quality control (pQC) pathway protects cells from acute endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress by attenuating translocation of nascent proteins despite their targeting to translocons at the ER membrane. Here, we investigate the hypothesis that the DnaJ protein p58^IPK plays an essential role in this process via HSP70 recruitment to the cytosolic face of translocons for extraction of translocationally attenuated nascent chains. Our analyses revealed that the heightened stress sensitivity of p58−/− cells was not due to an impairment of the pQC pathway or elevated ER substrate burden during acute stress. Instead, the lesion was in the protein processing capacity of the ER lumen, where p58^IPK was found to normally reside in association with BiP. ER lumenal p58^IPK could be coimmunoprecipitated with a newly synthesized secretory protein in vitro and stimulated protein maturation upon overexpression in cells. These results identify a previously unanticipated location for p58^IPK in the ER lumen where its putative function as a cochaperone explains the stress-sensitivity phenotype of knockout cells and mice.