W. THOMAS McGOUGH, Jr.

W. THOMAS McGough, Jr. is the chief legal officer of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), a $24 billion healthcare provider and insurer, and the largest nongovernmental employer in Pennsylvania.

Prior to joining UPMC in 2011, McGough was a partner with Reed Smith, where he also served as a member of the Executive Committee and as chairman of the Litigation Department.

McGough received a JD from the University of Virginia and an undergraduate degree, magna cum laude, from Princeton University. After law school he clerked for Judge Collins J. Seitz of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and Justice William H. Rehnquist of the United States Supreme Court.

He returned to Pittsburgh in 1980, serving as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania before joining Reed Smith as an associate in 1982.

In 1987, U.S. Senator Bob Dole, then minority leader of the Senate, appointed McGough associate counsel to the Senate committee investigating the Iran-Contra affair.

McGough is a former president of the Allegheny County Bar Association, a current member of the Academy of Trial Lawyers of Allegheny County, and a fellow of both the American College of Trial Lawyers and the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.

“Ancestry.com’s ethnicity estimate indicates that 86 percent my DNA traces to Ireland while 10 percent traces to Scotland. I’m aware that my McGough ancestors included Scotch Irish immigrants who arrived in America before the Revolutionary War. The surnames of my three other grandparents were Fitzpatrick, Curran and Holland, all at least loosely traceable to Irish immigrants in the mid-to-late 19th century,” McGough says.