Gibbons has announced the opening of a new office in Red Bank that counts among its resident lawyers a former New Jersey chief justice, a former corporate general counsel and a partner heading the firm's employment law compliance program.

The office, located at 141 West Front Street, is the firm's eighth location, and third in New Jersey.

Staffing the office is James R. Zazzali, former chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court and New Jersey attorney general; Stephen R. Reynolds, a commercial and criminal litigation partner, and former executive vice president, general counsel and secretary of Aramark and global general counsel of Alcatel-Lucent; and Kelly Ann Bird, a labor and employment department partner and leader of the Gibbons Workplace Training Academy.

"The three attorneys currently resident in the office have a great mix of experience and perspective that will prove uniquely helpful to the broadest segment of our client base," managing partner Patrick Dunican Jr. said in an email. Zazzali "thoroughly understands the judiciary and state government" Reynolds has "two decades of in-house insight," and Bird "can address virtually any personnel issue an employer might face," Dunican added in the Sept. 13 email.

Patrick C. Dunican Jr.

He said New Jersey remains "the cornerstone of our regional growth strategy" and the Red Bank office was further affirmation of that as Gibbons aggressively courts business clients of all sizes.

"While we are always where our clients need us to be, we really needed a base of operations in Monmouth County for the benefit of the large number of our clients who have their own operations there, and for the convenience of the many potential clients among the growing number of dynamic businesses based there," Dunican said in the same email.

Dunican said Monmouth County provides stable taxes, a high quality education system, and cultural and entertainment offerings. It is also home to a thriving and diverse economy, and business sectors that are microcosms of the state's overall economy, he added.

Nearly half of Monmouth County's top 10 employers are Gibbons clients, according to Dunican.

Monmouth County's fastest-growing and target growth industries coincide with target growth areas for Gibbons, Dunican added, including business enterprise management, social assistance, personal care services, information technology, telecommunications, and finance.

"As Gibbons continues to expand, we wanted to reinforce that New Jersey is central to our growth strategy, and Red Bank is, literally and in many other ways, central to New Jersey," he said.

With the opening of its Red Bank office, Gibbons now covers the state, including its corporate office in Newark. It also has offices in Philadelphia, New York, Wilmington, Del., Washington, DC, and West Palm Beach, Florida. The firm expanded into Trenton in 2002.

Dunican said having an expanded statewide presence in New Jersey reflects the firm's regional expansion strategy, which is focused on serving clients from easily accessible, transit-connected offices along the Mid-Atlantic and East Coast.