The SEC has announced an unexpected choice for the new head of its Division of Enforcement.
The agency’s new top cop is Margaret “Meg” Ryan, a senior judge in the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, according to an Aug. 21 announcement from the SEC.
Ryan will take over Sept. 2 as the new head of the SEC’s 1,400-person enforcement division to lead what industry and SEC sources have predicted will be a much lighter approach to enforcement than that taken under previous SEC chair Gary Gensler.
Industry sources said the choice of Ryan is an unusual one for the SEC, which usually prefers enforcement chiefs with long experience as criminal-court prosecutors or within the SEC’s own examinations and enforcement divisions.
Ryan has experience in neither role, but does have impeccable credentials within Trump administration circles.
She clerked for controversial right-wing US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and for conservative Appeals Court judge Michael Luttig. Her name appeared on a list of potential Supreme Court nominees published by the Trump campaign in 2016, according to an Aug. 22 story in Reuters.
She also served in the US Marine Corps, which deployed her to both the Philippines and Saudi Arabia.
She graduated from the University of Notre Dame Law School and returned to the Marines as a judge advocate before her appointment in 2006 to the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.
She was a partner at Wiley Rein & Fielding and Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott, according to the SEC announcement, which said she currently lectures on military law and justice at Harvard University Law School and has served as a visiting professor at Notre Dame and the George Washington University Law School.
Ryan brings to the SEC “decades of experience as a respected judge and practitioner of the law,” according to a statement in the SEC announcement from SEC chair Paul Atkins.
Atkins predicted Ryan would “lead the Division guided by Congress’ original intent: enforcing the securities laws, particularly as they relate to fraud and manipulation.”
Ryan will take the spot left open by Gensler’s Enforcement director Gurbir Grewal, who left in October, 2024 under intense pressure from an investment industry whose leaders accused the SEC of excessive aggression under Grewal’s tenure.
The current acting director, Sam Waldon, will return to his previous role as chief counsel of the enforcement division once Ryan takes over.
