(Reuters) - Peter Huber, a founder and former name partner of Washington, D.C.-based complex trial and appellate litigation firm Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, died on Friday after a long illness, according to the firm.

The firm, now named Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick, remembered Huber as a "brilliant lawyer and a generous and loyal colleague" in a statement on Monday. It did not specify his illness, and a spokeswoman for the firm was not immediately available.

Huber co-founded the firm in 1993 with Harvard University law school classmates Michael Kellogg and Mark Hansen.

The firm changed its name in 2017, replacing Huber and Evans' names with that of David Frederick.

Since the late 1980s Huber also was a senior fellow at free market think tank the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, where he wrote about energy, regulation and medical innovation research.

He authored many books, including on the topics of the transformation of the law and tort reform, science in the courtroom, 21st century medicine, energy and telecom law.

"We have lost a great mind and scientific crusader," Manhattan Institute president Reihan Salam said in a statement on the organizations website.

Huber earned several degrees in mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and attended law school at Harvard while teaching at MIT, the firm said. He also clerked on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals for Ruth Bader Ginsburg and on the U.S. Supreme Court for Sandra Day O'Connor, about whom he also wrote a book.

During his legal career, he "took time to mentor several generations of lawyers and particularly to promote women in the law," the law firm said in its statement.

"You can measure Peter's efforts by their direct results," the firm said. "Tort reform was adopted; junk science is kept out of courtrooms; the Bell breakup decree was lifted; telecom regulation has been replaced by competition; environmental and energy policy are better informed by Peter's ideas; and the FDA is beginning to embrace individualized medicine."