James Woolery’s decision to end a brief stint on the business side of Wall Street to return to the ranks of The Am Law 100 is among the more notable lateral moves in recent memoryone with implications both for the firm he is joining and the one he left behind.
A former corporate partner and business development chair at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Woolery left the firm in January 2011 to join Cravath client JPMorgan Chase, where he coheaded the North American M&A group for the nation’s largest bank. On Sunday the 43-year-old Woolery broke the news, via The New York Times‘s DealBook, that he was leaving the financial services giant to join Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft and become the firm’s first deputy chairman.
