Hunton Andrews Kurth announces new leaders

A new generation of leadership is emerging at Hunton Andrews Kurth.

The law firm on Tuesday announced several leadership appointments, all of which became effective April 1. Hunton has about 850 attorneys firmwide and 18 offices around the globe, with its largest office in Richmond. It is the third largest law firm headquartered in Virginia.

Hunton’s structured finance partner, Rudene Haynes, has become the Richmond office’s managing partner. Haynes said the new appointments reward the hard work of people who have been at the firm for most, if not all, their careers.

Haynes has worked at the firm since 1999, when it was known as Hunton & Williams. Hunton & Williams merged in 2018 with Andrews Kurth Kenyon, a Texas-based practice focused on the oil and gas industry, creating Hunton Andrews Kurth.

“I could have never imagined when I first walked in Hunton many years ago that I would even be asked to serve in this role,” Haynes said. “So, for me, this is like a dream because I care so much about this place.”

Haynes has been heavily involved in numerous boards and community affiliations during her time with the firm. She’s a founding member and secretary of Richmond & Henrico Public Health Foundation’s board of directors, a member of Hunton’s executive committee, a member of the Advisory Board of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Massey Cancer Center, inaugural chair of the VCU Massey Cancer Center Coalition and trustee of the Richmond Memorial Health Foundation. She is also a member of the firm’s executive committee and a firmwide co-hiring partner.

She said she always wanted to be the Richmond office’s managing partner. Some of her goals in the role are to improve staff connectivity, foster a welcoming environment for new attorneys, build the firm’s brand and raise the visibility of the firm’s partners and associates. When discussing her vision for the office, Haynes said she’s “all about community engagement” and wants to encourage employees to be more active in the community outside of the firm, getting involved in charitable organizations, community organizations and bar organizations.

“I know some people think it’s a thankless job, but for me, I feel like being in that role sort of makes you sort of the ambassador for the firm — you’re the face of the firm,” Haynes said. “When they think of Hunton, they think of you, and that’s something I’ve always wanted to do. I feel like I also have the ability to inspire people, to get them excited about coming to work, and remembering why it is they said that they wanted to join Hunton in the first place.”

Haynes replaces Doug Granger as the managing partner, a position he had served in since 2017. Granger will be with the firm for her entire first year to ensure a seamless transition and to provide support, she said.

Mergers and Acquisitions partner Steve Haas has become a co-head of the firm’s corporate team. Haas has been with Hunton for about two decades. He joined the firm’s Richmond office right out of law school in 2004 and worked there a year before briefly leaving for two years to practice corporate law in Delaware. He rejoined Hunton in 2007 and has stayed with the firm ever since. Since 2017, Haas has served as co-head of the firm’s M&A practice.

He said the new role as co-head of the corporate team is an “umbrella” overseeing numerous of the firm’s practices, including the mergers and acquisitions group, the private equity practice, the capital markets and securities practice and its privacy practice and outsourcing practice.

“It’s very much an honor to be selected for firm leadership positions,” Haas said. “It’s also a significant responsibility. It’s obviously a lot of administrative work. You know, law firms are complex businesses and they require a lot of administrative work to make sure that we operate. But it’s also significant in terms of setting strategy and making sure that we’re recruiting and retaining talent. So there’s a lot that goes into it.”

He said one of his main goals is ensuring Hunton retains its position as “a destination practice for corporate law in Virginia and beyond.”

“I think some of the challenges facing law firms right now that we’ll have to confront is artificial intelligence and then the increasing demands for recruiting exceptionally talented lawyers,” he said. “Because the future of any law firm is rooted in its talent pool, right — in the young lawyers. Making sure that we’re attracting bright, ambitious lawyers, and then we’re training them, and we’re creating opportunities for them to become partners in the future.”

Haas also serves as chair of the American Bar Association’s Corporate Laws Committee, is a fellow in the American College of Governance Counsel and was elected to the American Law Institute in 2021.

Jamie Head, who has experience on large-scale infrastructure developments and public-private partnerships around the world, became head of the firm’s energy and infrastructure team. He’s succeeding Jeff Schroeder who led the team since 2011 and remains with the firm. Head said he’s “extremely proud” to be entrusted with the new position.

In his new role, Head will be organizing the lawyers overseeing clients in the energy and infrastructure space. He said about 100 lawyers at the firm are focused on energy and infrastructure all over the globe and that the leader of that group is “mainly herding cats” to get the partners to work together.

“I mean, so we’re a partnership and a true partnership in the sense that we support each other’s initiatives and strategies for growing our own practices,” he said. “But in the end, there’s not a whole lot of heavy management. That’s not the nature of the role of being the head of a group. It’s largely to help facilitate coordination and collegiality and, when appropriate, to figure out how to focus on acquisitions of other lawyers where we have gaps, as well as to push our partners towards the work that the firm wants to be doing. That strategically makes sense.”

Head said that representing clients working on energy and infrastructure has always been a core part of Hunton’s identity, and five years from now, it should “still be a preeminent law firm in that space,” helping clients achieve their business goals and adapt and work within an evolving energy landscape.

Head was a summer associate in the Richmond office in the summer of 2004 and the summer of 2005. He then served in the United States Navy in Iraq, Washington State, and Washington D.C. as a judge advocate and then rejoined the firm in 2011 after resigning his commission.

He worked and Hunton’s Richmond office from 2011-2015, briefly left for a stint at another company — chief operating officer and general counsel of a Virginia-based American retail company called Alton Lane — and then returned to Hunton in 2016 to work at its London Office. Head has been at the Hunton Richmond office since 2019.

John Delionado, a litigation partner and former assistant United States attorney, has become Hunton’s Miami office managing partner, succeeding Juan Enjamio, who led that office since 2012. Delionado joined the Miami office in 2005 and has held a number of leadership roles concentrating on recruitment and mentorship, including serving as the Miami hiring partner and serving on the firm’s associates committee. Meanwhile, Deidre Duncan has become head of the firm’s administrative law group. Duncan led the firm’s environmental practice since 2017 and focuses her practice on permitting, compliance and litigation relating to environmental statutes. Duncan assumed the position from Eric Murdock.

“We are honored to announce these new leadership appointments,” said Hunton managing partner Sam Danon in a statement. “Each of these individuals brings a wealth of experience, dedication and vision to their roles, and will continue to drive the firm forward, further enhancing our ability to serve to our clients and communities with distinction.”