Gary Lynch (via Association of Corporate Counsel)
Who says you can never go home again? Certainly not the powers that be at Davis Polk, and especially not if the person doing the asking is former Bank of America general counsel and vice chairman Gary Lynch.
Lynch announced yesterday that he was returning to his former firm, where he was a partner from 1989 to 2001. Lynch retired from BoA last year, and took some time off before deciding to jump back to Biglaw. Now, as reported by Big Law Business, he is ready to practice again at Davis Polk:
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“I’ve practiced law for 43 years, so it’s something I think I know how to do, and I’m reasonably good at,” [Lynch] said. “So I got to the point where I thought maybe I should do it again, so here I am back at Davis Polk.”
Before joining Davis Polk — the first time around in 1989 — Lynch was the Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement director. And when he left the Biglaw firm it was to go in-house — first at Credit Suisse First Boston and then at Morgan Stanley, before landing at BoA in 2011.
Lynch’s tenure at BoA was marked by trying to get the bank out from under the legal mess left in the wake of the financial crisis:
“At that point, I thought was actually going to retire,” Lynch explained. “And basically the objective there was to help Bank of America get through the fallout from the mortgage crisis, and I accomplished that. It took several years longer than I thought it would.”
Lynch said the most challenging part of the job was responding to claims by the Department of Justice over the bank’s sale of residential mortgage-backed securities and its underwriting of mortgage loans, which it ultimately settled for $16.65 billion in 2014.
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Now that he’s gotten the BoA house in order — and taken some time off — it’s time for Lynch to head back to the hallowed halls of Biglaw.
Kathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).