CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Former US Attorney for Western District of Virginia, former UVA chief counsel, and former Jan. 6 House Select Committee head legal counsel Tim Heaphy is opening a new law firm with the former Jan. 6 special prosecutor Jack Smith next month.

Heaphy told WINA Morning News how this started when he reached out to Smith earlier this year, “and just sort of raised the prospect of going into business together.”

Heaphy, as head legal counsel of the committee, crafted some of the documents Smith used in his J-6 investigations, though the two did not necessarily work together on them.

In fact, Heaphy would often tell WINA during his Morning News appearances he was not sure of information Smith had access to beyond what he had gathered from the committee work.

“You know, I’ve been at a big law firm, but I’ve been interested in peeling off and doing something more entrepreneurial,” Heaphy said. “I have a lot of respect for Jack, I’ve never worked with him, but looking at the work he did as special counsel I’ve frankly been a fan.”

Heaphy said, “When I was thinking about putting together a group of lawyers with similar values and a similar vision of a practice, an investigations and litigation practice, he came to mind as someone who was free when the special counsel’s office was shut down and potentially interested.”

They reached out to a couple of other people, Heaphy said, “So, four of us are starting a new boutique investigations firm Heaphy, Smith, Harbach, and Windom in January of next year.”

He said they’re going to be full service litigation and investigations.

However, since Smith and him are part of the firm, Heaphy said, “It’ll attract a lot of people interested in taking on the current Administration, challenging executive orders or representing individuals who’ve been unfairly maligned or fired by the Administration.”

“We’ll certainly do that kind of work, part of it is lawyers now in this moment need to show up and do their part to ensure the rule of law is maintained, but it’s broader than that,” Heaphy said.

The vision is to be a full-service firm.

“We want to be there for clients of all kinds, corporations, universities, local government,” Heaphy said. “When there’s some kind of crisis and lawyers are needed to kind of figure out what happened, help navigate external investigations, and ideally leave the client better than they were before, that’s the kind of work we want to do and that kind of tracks with what we’ve done in public service.”