Can you cast a spell from a staff when wielding it two-handed as a weapon? Or do I first need to return it to a 1-handed grip?
The item Usage entry says "held in 1 hand" not "wielded in 2 hands" or "held in 1 or 2 hands."
In short, was the usage requirement intended to be 1 hand minimum, or just 1 hand?
Wielded includes held. You can hold a weapon without wielding it, but you can't wield it without holding it.
I'd apply the same logic to hands. Holding (or wielding, see above) a staff in both hands includes holding it in one hand.
Otherwise, you could drink poison (takes one hand to use) with both hands and it would have no effect.
Well if you're holding it in 2 hands, you're certainly holding it in 1 hand, so I'd say the usage requirement is satisfied. I'd also argue that wielded is just a more specific subset of held. If you're wielding a (non-floating, non-mental) weapon, you're obviously holding it.
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The "Casting Spells from a Staff" section (CRB p. 592) states "Casting a Spell from a staff requires holding the staff (typically in one hand) and Activating the staff by Casting the Spell, which takes the spell’s normal number of actions." I read the 'typically' to mean two-handed is an option at least some of the time. So I would take the 'usage' statement to mean 'at least one hand.'
However it also states "You must provide any material components, cost, or focus required by the spell, or you fail to cast it." So I would think that any spell needing a hand free to use such components would prevent you from holding the staff in two hands. Spells with only verbal and somatic components shouldn't cause this difficulty since both can be performed while holding things in your hands.