Jeff Davis is stepping down as executive director of the State Bar of Georgia to become a partner at Taylor English Duma. 

Davis—who became the bar's executive director in 2014 after a four-year stint as director of the state Judicial Qualifications Commission—said he will remain at the bar until June 30, at which time the bar plans to have a new executive director on board.

"I have spent almost half my career in public service both at the Judicial Qualifications Commission and at the bar, formerly as a bar prosecutor and as executive director," he said.  "I'm just ready for a new challenge in the final chapter of my legal career."

Davis served as the bar's assistant general counsel from 1992-1994 and as assistant bar counsel from 1995-1997.

Davis said that, as a partner at Taylor English's Atlanta office, he will also work with the firm's government affairs division, Taylor English Decisions. Davis' practice area will include professional ethics, special investigations, compliance, government affairs and mediation.

Davis said he strives "to maintain positive relationships on both sides of the political aisle."

"I want to be able to continue to do that in a bipartisan way," he said.

State bar president Darrell Sutton called Davis a dedicated and loyal confidant.

"I know I couldn't have done half as much during my presidency without him by my side," Sutton said.

Sutton has appointed a search committee to identify and recommend a candidate to replace Davis to the bar board of governors.  The executive director is nominated and elected by the board of governors at the bar's annual meeting in June.

"We want to have a seamless transition to a new executive director," Davis said. "I will stay on as long as necessary to ensure that the executive committee and the board of governors has an executive director in place."

Davis was of counsel at Madison firm Dubose Massey Bair & Evans when he became executive director of the JQC, the state's judicial watchdog agency at a time when the commission was faced with draconian budget cuts that left it with barely enough funds to operate. At the time, complaints against members of the state judiciary were on the rise. Six superior court judges had resigned in quick succession after the JQC launched investigations and a seventh had been publicly reprimanded.

A graduate of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he majored in psychology with a minor in English literature, Davis earned his law degree at Georgia State University in 1991 and went to work for Atlanta defense attorney Bruce S. Harvey, for whom he had clerked while in law school. In 1992, he moved to the State Bar of Georgia, where as assistant general counsel he investigated and prosecuted bar complaints.

It was while he was at the state bar that an informant walked into the office and gave Davis information that led to the federal prosecution of well-known criminal defense attorney Robert G. Fierer, who counted among his clients Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and former U.S. Rep. Pat Swindall.

Davis took the information to the State Bar's general counsel and then contacted the U.S. attorney's Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces in Atlanta, initiating a federal investigation that eventually led to Fierer's conviction and 30-month sentence for money-laundering and tax evasion.

Davis worked at the state bar until 1998, with a year hiatus in 1994 when he served as real estate counsel for Caribou Coffee, which had been founded by Davis' best friend from high school, John Puckett. Davis said he helped scout coffee shop locations, negotiated leases, secured zoning and building permits and handled the growing company's legal work in Atlanta.

Davis earned a master's degree in theological studies at Emory University's Candler School of Theology in 2007, where he concentrated on legal and religious ethics, the nexus of church and state and First Amendment issues.