A high-profile law firm with an office in Charlotte has merged with a leading financial services law firm, partners announced Monday.

Atlanta-based Kilpatrick Stockton, which has 500 attorneys in nine offices worldwide, combined with the smaller Washington, D.C., firm Muldoon Murphy & Aguggia.

The merger became effective last week, and the new firm will be known as Kilpatrick Stockton.

The combination brings together some of the nation's leading attorneys representing financial institutions and businesses in various industries, partners said.

The White House announced Thursday that Bush had nominated Glen E. Conrad to the Richmond, Va.-based appeals court, which has handled some of the country's biggest terrorism cases.

Conrad has been a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia since 2003.

If confirmed by the Senate, Conrad would fill the seat of H. Emory Widener Jr., who died last year.

Conrad, 58, a native of Radford, Va., is a 1974 graduate of the College of William and Mary and the Marshall Wythe School of Law. From 1976 to 2003, Conrad was a federal magistrate judge in the Western District of Virginia's Abingdon, Charlottesville and Roanoke divisions.

An Albany, N.Y., attorney investigated by the state for allegedly exaggerating his time sheets has stepped down from his post at Girvin & Ferlazzo P.C.

James McCarthy resigned from his "of counsel" position at the Albany law firm on the afternoon of May 2, according to a spokesman with Sawchuk Brown Associates, which is representing the law firm.

Generally, attorneys "of counsel" are part-time workers who are not partners or associates. McCarthy had been with the firm since 1992 and never earned a salary, according to the Sawchuk Brown spokesman.

Earlier on May 2, McCarthy resigned from his job with the state Department of Correctional Services after the state inspector general published a report saying that McCarthy exaggerated his time sheets and was often either at Girvin & Ferlazzo or at Wolferts Roost Country Club in Albany when he was allegedly on the clock.

McCarthy was in charge of preparing and processing paperwork for extraditions and renditions of fugitives or accused criminals. It was a part-time job, meaning he was supposed to work 18.75 hours per week, earning $60,867 a year.

In the resignation letter to the state, McCarthy said he stepped down "so as not to be a distraction" to the state corrections department.

"There are no shortage of opportunities for him. His talent as a lawyer allows him to walk away from those jobs with some confidence," said Karl Sleight, an attorney with Harris Beach PLLC and McCarthy's lawyer.

State investigators studied 12 weeks of McCarthy's work over the course of 2007. During those weeks, McCarthy was paid $6,000 for hours that he never logged, according to the inspector general's report.

On his time sheets, he claimed more than twice the hours that he actually worked, adding 120 hours of work onto the 98 hours he actually logged, the report said.

Torkelsen, who is in federal custody awaiting sentencing on an unrelated case, pleaded guilty to one count of perjury in connection with a 1999 declaration to a San Jose federal court, according to U.S. prosecutors in Philadelphia. He faces up to five years in prison on the charge, and is set to be sentenced on Aug. 5. An attorney for Torkelsen was not immediately available for comment.

Prosecutors said the law firms told courts and class members that Torkelsen was being paid as an independent expert but secretly paid him a share of the proceeds of the cases.

The offices of big-name law firms typically reflect a conservative corporate culture, right down to the traditional mahogany trim in partner suites.

But at the new offices of Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge in Hartford, there won't be a bit of hardwood from endangered rain forests in sight.

The firm hopes it will become the first law firm in Connecticut to earn LEED certification for its effort to outfit its new quarters in the 20 Church St. tower in downtown Hartford with the latest green technology.

The firm is spending $4 million to renovate and furnish 28,000 square feet, most of it on the 20th floor of the 23-story structure informally known as the Stilts Building.

Some people say Detroit attorney Doyle O'Connor's refusal to approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative for the November 2006 election ballot was an act of courage.

Others call the decision by the former member of the Board of State Canvassers an act of defiance.

Either way, the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission has charged O'Connor with professional misconduct for failing to carry out his public duties -- the first time it has invoked the charge.

More than a dozen individuals and groups, including the Michigan Democratic Party and the League of Women Voters of Michigan, have urged the state Attorney Discipline Board to drop the charges. The board tries and disciplines lawyers for alleged misconduct.

"It's really an outrage," said state Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer. "If lawyers are going to be subjected to this kind of second-guessing for acts as a public official, why would any lawyer want to serve in public office? This is a political vendetta."

But the woman who filed the misconduct complaint, Owosso novelist Diane Carey, who circulated petitions for the civil rights initiative, said O'Connor violated state law and should be disbarred.

"He violated his sworn oath to ratify a petition that was legally collected by the people and deserved to be on the ballot," Carey said.

Voters passed the initiative in 2006, 58% to 42%. It banned race and gender affirmative action in university admissions and government and public school hiring and contracting.

Proposal 2 got onto the ballot, despite complaints that sponsors duped voters, especially blacks, into believing it promoted affirmative action. Supporters denied that.

The grievance commission, which investigates and prosecutes lawyers for alleged misconduct, said O'Connor refused at a July 2005 meeting to approve putting the measure on the ballot despite a state attorney general opinion that canvassers had no legal authority to look into petition fraud.

And then, in December 2005, despite a Michigan Court of Appeals order to certify the proposal, he abstained.

O'Connor said he thought he was abstaining on a motion to close debate. The next month, he voted to put the measure on the ballot.

"If lawyers can defy a court order they disagree with, then they undermine the judicial system," said Deputy Grievance Administrator Robert Edick. O'Connor stepped down from the board in 2006 under the threat of contempt charges by the court of appeals.

O'Connor, then a labor lawyer, now works as a state administrative law judge. "Rather than being prosecuted for professional misconduct, Doyle should be given an award for trying to ensure the integrity of the electoral process," said his lawyer, Kenneth Mogill of Lake Orion, who wants the discipline board to toss the charge.