Patrick Pascarella, partner with Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton in Washington, D.C.

Patrick Pascarella has landed in the Washington, D.C., office of Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton after more than nine years at Tucker Ellis in Cleveland, Ohio.

Pascarella, who joins as a partner in the firm's antitrust and regulation practice, can boast past roles in high-stakes antitrust controversies including Pacific Bell v. linkLine Communications, Bell Atlantic v. Twombly and State of New York et al. v. Microsoft.

He said he found his new firm's deep antitrust bench, large reach and expertise in areas outside of antitrust attractive for him and for his clients.

“I needed a different platform than Tucker Ellis could offer,” Pascarella said of his decision to leave the Midwest for D.C.

Pascarella got his start in Washington, earning his law degree at George Washington University and then practicing law at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. After stints in the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department and serving as AT&T chief antitrust counsel from 1996 to 2009, he became partner at Tucker Ellis.

Having had firsthand experience with both AT&T and the Justice Department, Pascarella said he thought the federal judge who signed off on the AT&T-Time Warner merger in June made the right call. Pascarella said despite the Trump administration's developing posture on antitrust, he expects mainly tinkering with past practice, and in any case the underlying antitrust laws change slowly.

Pascarella's decision to join Kilpatrick Townsend was aided by his having known Pete Boyle, chair of the firm's antitrust practice, for about 25 years.

Boyle said lawyers with Pascarella's range of experience are few and far between, including his high-level in-house perspective on antitrust matters.

Other recent hires for Kilpatrick in Washington include Tajma Rahimic, who joined Kilpatrick Townsend's technology transactions and global data protection team in June from Davis Wright Tremaine.