Rebekah (Becky) Byers Kcehowski and James (Jimmy) Kitchen, lawyers in Jones Day's Pittsburgh Office, have been selected by The Legal Intelligencer for inclusion in its second annual list of "Pennsylvania Trailblazers," which recognizes lawyers in the Commonwealth who have moved the needle in the legal industry and made significant contributions to practice, policy, and technological advancements in their sector.

Ms. Kcehowski is a partner in the Firm's Business & Tort Litigation Practice. As the new Partner-in-Charge of Jones Day's Pittsburgh Office, she led and navigated the transition of the office to a fully remote, secure, high-quality client service operation while maintaining an active, challenging, and complex litigation docket and continuing to serve the community.

Initially, the task of leading the transition to a fully remote operation involved managing a barrage of rapidly changing information from local, state, and federal officials to ensure the safety of lawyers and staff and compliance with the law, while identifying and deploying equipment and resources to enable secure remote access and continued client service and, at the same time, assisting clients with their impacted operations. Throughout, Ms. Kcehowski maintained her active litigation practice, defending clients in class and complex actions. Over five remote months, her teams won denial of a Third Circuit mandamus petition, obtained federal officer removal of a digital data privacy class action, and briefed summary judgment and Daubert motions on damages issues worth hundreds of millions of dollars. She also remains active in the community. For years, she has served on various non-profit boards and executive committees dedicated to education and impoverished youth, including most recently the Allegheny Conference on Community Development Board's Racial Equity Task Force, working to address systemic racism and inequity in access to opportunities in the ten-county region.

Mr. Kitchen is of counsel in the Firm's Investigations & White Collar Defense Practice. As an Assistant U.S. Attorney and one of the Justice Department's nationwide leaders for cyber-investigations, he led the investigation that resulted in the first-ever prosecution of Chinese military officers for hacking into the computer networks of U.S. companies. Since leaving the government, he has established a distinctive government and cybersecurity investigations practice from Pittsburgh.

Before joining Jones Day in February 2018, Mr. Kitchen helped to establish Pittsburgh as a national center for DOJ cyber investigations. His high-profile successes at DOJ contributed to the investment of significant private and public sector resources and the creation of numerous cybersecurity investigation and information sharing programs now based in Pittsburgh. In just over two years in private practice, he has enlisted and trained associates in Pittsburgh and beyond to work on matters involving Jones Day's local, national, and international clients victimized by sophisticated cross-border computer hackers who then find themselves also under scrutiny from federal and state regulators. Clients who have been victims of trade secret theft, ransomware, and supply chain espionage have come to rely on his experienced counsel. In addition to assisting companies with internal, cyber, and government investigations, Mr. Kitchen has also taken the lead in novel privacy litigation.