Jones Day Boosts Dallas Office With Three Ex-SNR Denton Partners

Jan. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Jones Day hired ex-U.S. Attorney Matthew D. Orwig and two other litigators, Basheer Y. Ghorayeb and Shawn Cleveland, all formerly of SNR Denton US LLP in Dallas.

The moves will help Jones Day strengthen its litigation team, the firm said today in a statement. All three will work as partners out of the firm’s Dallas office, adding to the more than 200 lawyers Jones Day employs in Houston and Dallas.

“Matt, Shawn and Basheer bring us formidable litigation capabilities in white collar, securities, patent and other trial and appellate areas, both here in Texas and firmwide,” said Pat Villareal, partner-in-charge of Jones Day’s Dallas office, in a statement.

Orwig, 53, was a U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas, based in Tyler, from 2001 to 2007. He was the managing partner of SNR Denton’s Dallas office.

Ghorayeb, 35, was a member of Denton’s litigation and arbitration practice. Cleveland, 40, who also served on that team, helped represent Kenneth Lay, the late former chairman of Enron Corp., in the civil and criminal cases that followed the company’s collapse.

Jones Day, which has more than 2,500 lawyers worldwide, was ranked as the seventh-highest-grossing law firm in 2010 by the American Lawyer, a trade magazine, with more than $1.62 billion in revenue.

--Editors: Charles Carter, Stephen Farr

To contact the reporter on this story: Ian Thomas in New York at ithomas15@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net.