After five years as an in-house leader for Bank of New York Mellon, Adam Solowsky has decided to go back into private practice.

Solowsky has joined Reed Smith as counsel in the firm's financial industry group in New York, which makes him the second in-house lawyer in the financial services industry to transition back into private practice this week. 

Herbert Smith Freehills announced Monday that Deutsche Bank general counsel Joseph Longo had joined the firm's financial services regulatory practice in Australia. He'd spent 17 years with Deutsche Bank before retiring in March. 

While at BNY Mellon, Solowsky served as managing director and managing counsel and advised the bank on corporate trust matters and global operations. In his new role at Reed Smith, he'll focus primarily on corporate trustees and other financial intermediaries.

“Being in-house counsel was a great experience, but ultimately I decided to return to private practice to get more heavily involved in transactions, which can be hard for an in-house to do given the pace of the work,” he said Thursday. “I knew Reed Smith well from my time at the bank, where I saw first-hand the depth of their capabilities, so I was very happy to take this opportunity to return to private practice with the firm.”

Earlier in his career, Solowsky worked as a freelancer for The Boston Globe before entering Cornell Law School. After earning his law degree, he joined Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft as an associate and later departed the firm to serve as counsel at Hogan Lovells. In 2011, he joined Bloomberg L.P. as a legal analyst and product manager before taking a position as manager of product development for Bloomberg BNA, according to his LinkedIn profile. 

Solowsky has “served as lead lawyer on some of the highest-profile credit crisis workouts. He has also acted as counsel on a broad range of transactions, insolvencies, and litigation matters, for both U.S. domestic and international deals,” according to an announcement from Reed Smith. 

Ed Estrada, global chair of the firm's financial industry group, described Solowsky as a “true pioneer in the field” who “has operated across the lifecycle of deals, from the bidding process, through negotiation, daily deal management and on to terminations and defaults—a skill that we know will be in high demand by our clients.”

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