SEC Chairman’s Top Aide Leaving Agency for Private Law Practice

(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s chief of staff plans to leave the agency in early August for private law practice.

Lucas Moskowitz, who has spent two years as the top aide to SEC Chairman Jay Clayton, will become a partner at the WilmerHale law firm in Washington. Moskowitz’s job at the SEC has put him at the center of much of the agency’s business, including policy making, enforcement actions and personnel decisions. He’s also been a key person in the regulator’s dealings with Congress and other agencies.

“He is one of those people who makes the hard things look easy,” Clayton said in an interview. “All of a sudden you look up and the problem’s solved.”

Clayton said Moskowitz played an integral role shepherding the SEC’s recent rules on broker conduct and derivatives.

Moskowitz, 39, has spent nearly a decade working in government, including as a staff member for the House Financial Services Committee and chief investigative counsel for the Senate Banking Committee. At the SEC, he also has served as an enforcement lawyer and as a counsel to Republican Commissioner Daniel Gallagher.

When he starts at WilmerHale in September, Moskowitz will be reunited with Gallagher, who is deputy chairman of the firm’s securities practice.

Clayton is promoting Sean Memon, his deputy chief of staff, to replace Moskowitz, the SEC said. Memon, 41, worked with Clayton at the Sullivan & Cromwell law firm before coming to the SEC in 2017.

Bryan Wood, currently the director of the agency’s legislative and intergovernmental affairs office, will become the deputy chief.

To contact the reporter on this story: Robert Schmidt in Washington at rschmidt5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jesse Westbrook at jwestbrook1@bloomberg.net, Gregory Mott

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