Bryant Miller Olive, a Tallahassee, Fla.-based law firm with a sizable public finance practice, is expanding into the mid-Atlantic region by opening an office in the District of Columbia and hiring Patti Grant-Wilkinson, formerly a partner with Hunton & Williams LLP, to head it, the firm announced yesterday.
Grant-Wilkinson, who was with Hunton & Williams’ Washington office for 16 years as an associate and then a partner, has served as bond counsel to the District of Columbia, the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority, the D.C. Housing Finance Agency, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, Prince George’s County, Md., and Miami-Dade County, Fla. She also has worked on numerous airport deals and privatized student-housing deals in the Southeast as well as served as counsel to the Commerce Capital Access Program Corp., which is the designated bonding authority to the U.S. Department of Education for its historically black colleges and universities loan program.
Before Hunton & Williams, Grant-Wilkinson was an associate with Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll LLP. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and received her law degree from the Law Center there in 1988.
During her 18-year career, the firm said Grant-Wilkinson has worked on more than 150 transactions in connection with the issuance of over $12 billion in tax-exempt bonds.
The firm, which also has offices in five other Florida cities, also announced that Len Marcinko, who chairs the firm’s tax-exempt bond tax practice from the firm’s Atlanta office, will now divide his time between Atlanta and the new Washington office. Marcinko is a former attorney-adviser in the office of chief counsel of the Internal Revenue Service.
In 2005, Bryant Miller Olive was ranked 31st nationally among bond counsel firms, credited with $3.27 billion in transactions, according to Thomson Financial. So far this year, the firm is ranked 24th nationally and credited with $1.36 billion in transactions.
