Generating an adverse pressure gradient (APG), using a rotating cylinder in the proximity of a plane wall under a laminar freestream flow, is studied numerically in this work. The magnitude of the generated APG is a function of the gap, G, between the cylinder and the wall, and the rotational speed of the cylinder, Ω. The flow in such a configuration is characterized by periodic transient vortex shedding at high Reynolds number. A numerical model for the computation of the transient flow for this configuration is developed using the ANSYS CFD simulation tool. The model is validated against published experimental and numerical data for similar flow configurations and excellent agreement is observed. A parametric study is carried out for different combinations of G and Ω for two different Reynolds numbers of 200 and 1000 to examine the development of the resulting separation bubble due to the generated APG. The mechanism of the boundary layer separation over the plane wall and the corresponding wake dynamics is investigated. Results are presented in terms of the distribution of the pressure coefficient as well as skin friction coefficient along the wall and flow patterns around and downstream of the cylinder in the proximity of the wall. The results of these computations confirm that using a rotating cylinder over a plane wall in a freestream flow is an effective technique to generate a controlled range of adverse pressure gradients.