Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young has hired two longtime U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawyers in the firm's Washington, D.C., office, adding to a group of partners with experience at the agency.

The new partners, David Grim and Sara Crovitz, each spent more than 20 years at the SEC. Grim was most recently director of the Division of Investment Management, and Crovitz was deputy chief counsel and associate director in the division.

Grim developed regulatory policy for investment advisers and investment companies, and oversaw the division's relationships with other functions at the SEC. Crovitz worked with a team of more than 50 lawyers in the division and oversaw their international obligations.

“Right now, a lot of asset management clients are in implementation stage from rules that were adopted under my watch,” Grim said. “Obviously I have a lot of experience with those rules.”

Crovitz said she was offered an early retirement at the SEC, and saw it as an opportunity to try something new. She said she already knew several people at Stradley Ronon who previously worked at the commission, or who she met through their work for Stradley Ronon clients in matters before the agency.

“It's now a little SEC pocket of people at the firm,” Crovitz said.

That experience is valuable, she said, in determining for a client how the SEC staff might respond to an issue.

“Their arrival marks the latest strategic hires for our market-leading practice,” Bruce Leto, who co-chairs Stradley Ronon's investment management group, said in a statement on the new hires. “They bring impressive SEC backgrounds and experience that dovetail well with our regulatory capabilities, and we are confident our clients will benefit greatly from their skill sets.”

The firm's investment management practice represents investment company clients with more than 1,500 different funds and more than $2 trillion in assets under management.

“In the asset management business, they're one of the pre-eminent leaders of private practice in that space,” Grim said. He also noted that his division in the SEC was listed as one of the top 10 places to work in the federal government.

“I was looking for that kind of vibe,” he said.

Grim noted that his time as director largely coincided with Mary Jo White's time as chair of the SEC. She stepped down at the end of Barack Obama's presidency.

“We had an ambitious agenda that we made a lot of progress on,” Grim said. “It was the culmination of my time there, so when I was done with that, it was time to do something different.”

Dalia Blass was named the new director of the Division of Investment Management last year, coming from Ropes & Gray.