Donald Trump picks Jay Clayton, former SEC chair, for powerful U.S. attorney role

President-elect Donald Trump said he has picked Jay Clayton, former chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission during his first term, as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

If confirmed by the Senate, Clayton would lead one of the most important federal prosecutor offices in the country. It's the office that prosecuted onetime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who's now one of Trump's most vocal foes. It also investigated Trump but did not bring charges over the hush money payments that eventually turned into his conviction in his New York state trial.

Clayton, a veteran of law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, returned to the firm in 2021.

Born in Newport News, Virginia, he grew up in Hershey, Pennsylvania. He has two bachelor’s degrees ? one in engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and another in economics from Cambridge University in the U.K. Clayton went on to earn a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

At his law firm, he served as an adviser to companies on issues related to the SEC, the Federal Reserve, the Department of Justice and other agencies. The SEC, which is responsible for policing Wall Street, brought the fewest number of insider trading cases in decades during Clayton’s tenure, according to NPR.

NPR reviewed data from the 1980s through 2019 and found that under the Trump administration, the SEC brought just 32 insider trading enforcement actions in 2019, the lowest number since 1996.

The current U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York is Damian Williams, a longtime prosecutor appointed by President Joe Biden in 2021. Williams’ highest-profile prosecutions include securing a fraud conviction against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and corruption and bribery conviction of former New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez. Williams also brought pending charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams and rapper and music producer Sean “Diddy" Combs.

In his first administration, Trump had nominated Clayton to take over as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, replacing Geoffrey Berman, who was fired. That nomination was stalled after Trump lost the White House in 2020.

The office had been investigating cases related to Trump’s inauguration committee and his associates.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Donald Trump nominates Jay Clayton as SDNY U.S. Attorney