North Carolina Lawyers Weekly has selected McGuireWoods partners Douglas W. Ey Jr. and Mary Nash K. Rusher for its 2019 Leaders in the Law list honoring lawyers’ contributions to the legal community. Honorees were recognized at an Oct. 25 awards banquet and profiled in a special North Carolina Lawyers Weekly publication.
As general counsel of McGuireWoods, Ey advises the firm and its lawyers on legal and ethical issues. Based in Charlotte, he is the only North Carolina lawyer who serves as the general counsel of an Am Law 50 firm. Before becoming general counsel in 2013, he chaired the firm’s Financial Services Litigation Department and represented clients in shareholder, banking, trusts and estates, and commercial litigation matters. He is a fellow of the prestigious American College of Trial Lawyers and a permanent member of the Fourth Circuit Judicial Conference.
Ey has served on the Davidson College Board of Visitors, as a trustee of The Crosland Foundation and co-chair of Legal Services of the Southern Piedmont’s Access to Justice Campaign. In 2016, he received McGuireWoods’ highest honor, the Anne Whittemore Award for Lifetime Achievement.
“I am humbled to receive this recognition from North Carolina Lawyers Weekly and grateful to my McGuireWoods colleagues for their friendship and unwavering support,” Ey said.
Rusher is managing partner of the firm’s Raleigh office and is recognized as one of North Carolina’s leading public finance lawyers. She works closely with local governments, nonprofits and other entities to finance capital improvements using tax advantage financing, primarily tax-exempt bonds. She has served as bond counsel, bank counsel and underwriter’s counsel in financings for cities and counties, state-wide agencies and authorities, and public and private schools, colleges and universities. She also has played a role in nearly all of the affordable housing bond issues in North Carolina over the past decade that involve tax-exempt bonds and 4% tax credits. She has worked with local governments on a variety of innovative financings, including new markets tax credits and public private partnerships.
Rusher serves on the Board of Governors of the North Carolina Bar Association as well as the Board of Directors of the North Carolina Bar Foundation and WakeMed Health and Hospital. She is past chair of the Board of Directors of the YMCA of the Triangle, and continues to serve on its finance committee.
“It is an honor to be included in this class of accomplished lawyers and leaders who have done so much for our profession and our communities,” Rusher said.