Less than two years after essentially quadrupling in size and moving its corporate offices halfway across the country, Steward Health Care has hired a new general counsel.

Steward, which touts itself as the nation's largest private, for-profit physician-led health care network, announced Monday that longtime Boston health care and employment law attorney Herb Holtz will lead the company's legal department and serve on its leadership team. He succeeds Joe Maher, who is retiring as GC in January.

For the past nearly 15 years, Holtz has been a partner at Holtz & Reed, where he specialized in employment law, according to his LinkedIn profile. In addition to representing Steward, Holtz has served as lead outside counsel to Boston's major academic medical centers, including the Harvard teaching hospitals, Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital, according to the statement announcing his hire.

The new GC was not immediately available for comment, but in the statement he said he was “immensely impressed” with Steward's growth and its “transformative” effects on health care.

“I'm honored to be joining the important and life-changing mission Steward is on to make affordable world-class health care more accessible than ever before,” he said.

Steward operates 36 hospitals in nine states across the United States and the country of Malta and employs about 40,000 health care professionals. Last fall, the health system acquired Tennessee-based IASIS Healthcare in a $2 billion deal, which roughly doubled Steward's size. This came not long after the company purchased eight hospitals from another chain, Community Health Systems, according to a November 2017 report in The Boston Globe.

Just last week, Steward officially moved its headquarters from Boston to Dallas, according to a Becker's Hospital Review report. Holtz will work out of the company's new home base.

In 2013, Steward was named as a finalist for The National Law Journal's award for Boston Legal Department of the Year. At that time, the legal department included seven attorneys who handled the bulk of the company's transactions, often without the help of outside counsel.

In his new role, Holtz will report to Steward chairman and CEO Dr. Ralph de la Torre.

“Over the past several years, I've worked closely with Herb on a number of important and complex cases—his intelligence, tenacity and common sense is unrivaled,” de la Torre said in the statement. “As one of the nation's top health care lawyers, Herb's extensive and varied expertise in every component of the sector will be of immense value to Steward and guiding our path forward.”

Holtz earned his degree from Boston College Law School.