Thompson & Knight announced on Wednesday that Jessica Magee, the general counsel of firm client The Beneficient Company Group and former Securities and Exchange Commission trial lawyer, has returned to the place where she started her legal career.
“Jessica brings a tremendous amount of expertise and insight into the SEC and white-collar practice that everyone wants and very few law firms have,” Greg Curry, leader of T&K’s trial group, told The Texas Lawbook in an interview.
“Jessica hit the ground running,” he said. “This is a coup for Thompson & Knight.”
Magee joins a white-collar and regulatory group at T&K that has a bench of about a dozen lawyers. She was a litigation associate at T&K from 2002 to 2010 before joining the SEC in Fort Worth.
At the SEC, Magee served as the associate director in charge of the regulatory agency’s enforcement efforts in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kansas and was the chief trial counsel for the region.
The second highest-ranking lawyer at the Fort Worth Regional Office led several high-profile enforcement actions. She helped secure a $46.8 million judgment against Life Partners Holdings and its executives in an alleged death bonds trading scheme. Lawyers also credit her for being the driving force behind the SEC’s securities fraud case against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The SMU Dedman School of Law graduate also co-led the pioneering case against Arise Bank, in which the agency made its first cryptocurrency enforcement action and the first appointment of a receiver in a fraudulent cryptocurrency offering.
Magee’s success in public service earned her the SEC’s prestigious Arthur F. Mathews Award and the Ferdinand Pecora Award for creativity and dedication in protecting investors and the public.
In 2018, Magee left the SEC to become the general counsel at The Beneficient Company Group, a Dallas-based alternative asset management firm. She led a legal department that included former SEC lawyers Timothy Evans and Nikolay Vydashenko. Magee’s history with The Beneficient Group dates back to when she worked on matters for the company as an associate at T&K.
Mark Curriden contributed to this article.