Paul Hastings Further Expands Boston Office With Leading Private Equity Partner

BOSTON – Further strengthening its premier global private equity practice and expanding Boston team, Paul Hastings LLP announced today that James Curley has joined the firm as a partner.

“Jim’s arrival in Boston adds breadth and depth to our strong global private equity platform and further enables us to gain market share with traditional upper middle market buyout work and to serve asset managers more broadly, including the continued evolution of hybrid capital,” said firm Chair Frank Lopez.

Joining from Goodwin Procter LLP, Curley represents private equity firms and their portfolio companies, as well as early- and late-stage growth companies, in myriad transactions, including leveraged buyouts, add-on acquisitions and dispositions.

Curley has guided matters on behalf of leading private equity firms over the last 20 plus years, with particular experience spearheading transactions in middle to upper middle market leveraged buyouts for such firms as Charlesbank Capital Partners, Leeds Equity Partners, Nonantum Capital Partners and SFW Capital Partners.

His arrival at Paul Hastings comes on the heels of several additions to the firm’s global private equity and M&A platform, including partners Christopher Zochowski and Bradley Noojin from A&O Shearman in New York. M&A partner Kristiina Leskinen and Antitrust partner Josh Soven also recently joined from Paul, Weiss in New York and Washington, D.C., respectively.

Curley also builds on the growth of the firm’s Boston office, established in April 2024 with the addition of a seven-lawyer PE buyout team including partners Alex Temel and Bill Schwab. Chambers-ranked co-chair of Tech Transactions Sarah Gagan, technology M&A and emerging companies/venture capital partner Ian Engstrand and M&A and shareholder activism lawyer Andrew Goodman recently joined the firm in Boston as well.

“It’s exciting to join Paul Hastings at a time of such momentum for its global private equity practice,” said Curley. “I look forward to collaborating with talent across the Paul Hastings’ platform, including with several of my former colleagues who have joined the firm in the past few years and who I believe share my enthusiasm for the firm’s offerings in this space.”

Over the last several years, the firm has added more than 25 private equity and M&A partners. This strategic growth has propelled the firm’s Chambers-ranked PE practice into the top 10 for U.S. exits ranked by value in Mergermarket’s H1 2025 league tables and into the top 10 by deal count in Bloomberg’s 2024 global private equity league tables.

The practice and the firm more broadly continue to gain market share with a wide range of work for leading asset managers, including ABRY, Apollo, Ares, Atlas, Blackstone, Brookfield, Carlyle, EQT, Fortress, Francisco Partners, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Great Hill, H.I.G., KKR, Morgan Stanley Capital Partners, Sixth Street Partners, Symphony Technology Group and TPG.

About Paul Hastings

With widely recognized elite teams across 17 core practices, Paul Hastings is a premier law firm with a culture of excellence focused on providing intellectual capital and superior execution globally to the world’s leading investment banks, asset managers and corporations. For more information, visit www.paulhastings.com.