James Johnson is venturing out from Knight Johnson, the business litigation boutique he co-founded with Bryan Knight eight years ago, to launch his own trial law firm.

Both said the split is amicable. “It was time for me to tackle something new, and I like trying cases,” said Johnson, who is developing a more trial-oriented practice focused on personal injury and white-collar defense.

Knight will continue to represent developers, builders, hotel and business owners in disputes. “We are still friends and we'll refer business to each other,” he said.

Knight and Johnson started Knight Johnson in 2011 to handle real estate, business and construction litigation. “We started out just the two of us, with no staff and licking our own stamps,” Knight said.

Since then the firm has added three lawyers, Sherri Buda, Scott McAlpine and Nick Sears, paralegal Laura Heppolette and staff. All are staying with Knight, who has renamed his firm Knight Law.

Knight will keep their office space in Midtown at 1360 Peachtree St. N.E., while Johnson has established Johnson Trial Law in Decatur at 150 E. Ponce de Leon Ave.—just a three-minute commute from his house, he said.

Knight and Johnson, both 41, met as opposing counsel on cases over residential real estate developments adjacent to Atlantic Station. Knight was at Schreeder, Wheeler & Flint, which was representing homebuilder Beezer Homes, and Johnson was at Morris, Manning & Martin, whose client was the developer.

“We were the lowly associates working late nights,” Knight said.

Both subsequently worked together as associates at litigation firm Bloom Parham for a short period and then decided to start their own shop. They've won a few multimillion dollar verdicts along the way. “We've been far more successful than I would have thought, sitting there licking stamps eight years ago,” Knight said.

They tried the very first case heard by the newly formed Fulton County Business Court in 2012, Johnson said, winning a $1 million jury verdict for a developer against a bank.

And in 2015 Johnson, Knight and Buda scored a big win, a $7.1 million jury verdict in a case they tried for an investor, RM Kids, over a real estate dispute. A Gwinnett County jury decided that a title insurance company owed the $7.1 million for the diminished value of a 151-acre parcel of land slated for a subdivision near Sugarloaf Parkway in Gwinnett. The land could no longer be used for a subdivision, the investor discovered after purchase, because it was contaminated in the 1990s by an oil spill, but the title insurer refused to cover the defect in the title.

The title insurer successfully appealed the verdict, and Knight and Buda retried the case last year, winning a $4.2 million verdict that time.

The Daily Report has named both Knight and Johnson as “On the Rise” lawyers under 40.

Johnson said he's taking on some high-stakes personal injury cases and white-collar criminal defense cases at Johnson Trial Law. “I have a tendency of taking on cases that I find personally interesting,” he said.

Those have included defending an investment group accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of perpetrating a $70 million Ponzi scheme; another client accused of defrauding a sperm bank; and another who was one of the subjects of a grand jury investigation into a “scam PAC,” the term for political action committees that purport to raise funds to support a political candidate or cause, only to spend it on themselves.

Johnson is currently working on two personal injury cases in California, where he also practices: a sexual assault case for a woman whom he said was repeatedly molested over several years by a tennis coach and another for an NFL player who did not receive the necessary emergency care after a “gruesome hand injury” on the field, which caused him career problems.

“My cases are not nearly as sexy as some of those,” Knight said.