A high-ranking lawyer from PNC's legal department is returning to the law firm world, joining McGuireWoods in Pittsburgh.

After serving as managing chief counsel and corporate secretary at PNC Financial Services Group Inc., corporate and securities lawyer Christi Davis is now at McGuireWoods as senior counsel.

“The excitement of sophisticated work and the pace of private practice, I missed it after being in-house for eight-and-a-half years,” Davis said. As for her choice of firm, she said, “There's a buzz on the street in Pittsburgh about McGuireWoods.”

Before going in-house at PNC in 2009, Davis was a partner in Reed Smith's corporate and securities group. In her role at PNC, Davis worked on corporate governance matters, advising the company's board of directors and executive management, and also handled securities compliance issues. Before becoming managing chief counsel and corporate secretary, she was senior counsel to PNC's asset and liability management group.

A good bit of McGuireWoods' Pittsburgh growth in recent years involved laterals from Reed Smith. In 2016, the Virginia-born, 1,000-lawyer firm added a group led by Pittsburgh partner Mary Hackett and San Francisco-based David Powell.

Hackett had also served a stint at PNC, as chief litigation counsel. And she worked closely with former Reed Smith managing partner Gregory Jordan before he left the firm to become PNC's general counsel.

Davis said testimony from her connection to other Reed Smith alumni played a role in her decision to join McGuireWoods, which has 58 lawyers in Pittsburgh.

“When you're in private practice, it can vary so much from firm to firm and office to office,” she said. “There was the ability for me to get insight from former colleagues, so that helped.”

David Hornyak, who leads McGuireWoods' Pittsburgh office, said Davis is a natural fit for the practice there, strengthening its corporate finance, corporate governance and securities capabilities.

Davis said she will be working closely with partner Hannah Frank, who brought her securities practice to McGuireWoods in 2015 from Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney. Davis will start with a focus on the Pittsburgh market, she said, and hopes to continue a client relationship with PNC. But she said she also hopes to expand beyond that market to provide securities counsel to firm clients elsewhere.

Hornyak said he expects the Pittsburgh office to continue growing, particularly with an eye on adding associates in the near future. He said the office has the opportunity to cement itself as a go-to resource for corporate clients.

“The growth we've experienced lately is us being a beneficiary of adding good partner-level attorneys here over the past few years,” he said. “Now we're faced with the need to fill out the bench to support the work we've been getting.”