(Reuters) - Crowell & Moring is adding a longtime government lawyer in the nation's capital whose background spans multiple practice areas at the firm.

Toni Michelle Jackson is joining Crowell as a partner after six years with the District of Columbia attorney general's office, most recently as deputy attorney general of the office's public interest division, the firm said Wednesday.

She'll be part of Crowell's litigation and labor and employment groups, in addition to its state attorneys general practice.

Jackson will have a broad civil litigation practice, encompassing employment, commercial disputes, class actions, internal investigations and civil rights, the firm said. Jackson said she gained a "varied practice set" from her work in the D.C. attorney general's office and in the employment litigation section of the U.S. Department of Justice's civil rights division.

Jackson said she was impressed by Crowell's lawyers when she had a case opposite them while in the attorney general's office. Her former boss, Natalie Ludaway, also joined Crowell last year, which she said made her consider the firm.

Ludaway, who was chief D.C. deputy attorney general, joined Crowell in March 2020, about two months after the firm launched a state attorney general enforcement and investigations practice with a pair of Sidley Austin lawyers.

That move made Crowell part of the growing list of law firms to unveil or expand a practice focused on state attorney general and other enforcement matters in the past year or so. Just in the past few months, Cozen O'Connor has added two lawyers with experience in different states to its practice, and Jones Day formally launched a state AG group.

Crowell chair Philip Inglima in a statement called Jackson a "highly-respected first-chair litigator."

D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine, in a statement included in Crowell's press release, also praised her work, saying "our loss is Crowell & Moring's gain."

"Toni was a fierce advocate for District agencies in some of our most complex defensive litigation and for vulnerable District residents in our civil rights and elder financial protection cases," Racine said.

While she was deputy attorney general, Jackson launched the office's civil rights section and the elder justice section, the firm said. She also previously served as chief of its equity section. Earlier in her career, she co-founded Jackson & Ward, which Crowell said was the first law firm in Minnesota owned by Black women.