find . -type f |
while read -r f; do
b1=${f##*/}
b2=`echo "$b1" | sed 's/^\([0-9][0-9] \)\1\{0,\}//'`
[ "$b1" != "$b2" ] && mv "$f" "${f%/*}/$b2"
done
If you also want to rename directories, the find invocation will need to be modified (to drop the file type check and to specify depth first traversal).
Thank you both for the responses. The sed syntax from anbu23 is fantastic. Also, I ran the script that alister posted here on a bunch of test files and it works exactly as hoped. I will study this command structure to help me improve my scripting. Thank you!