Barofsky, Former Tarp Watchdog, to Join Law Firm

Neil Barofsky, who became known as a staunch advocate for transparency and accountability as the watchdog of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, is joining the law firm Jenner & Block as a partner.

Barofsky will join the firm's New York office in the litigation department, focusing on white-collar defense and civil matters involving financial instruments, the firm announced Monday. He will also be part of the firm's government controversies and public-policy litigation practice group.

Barofsky was Special inspector General for Tarp from late 2008 through March 2011, charged with monitoring fraud in the program and issuing reports on how to prevent taxpayer losses. His reports often harshly criticized federal regulators for failing to protect the government's interest or extract concessions from bailed-out firms.

He wrote about his experience as the Sigtarp in the book Bailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street, published last year, which criticized the federal regulatory establishment as overly deferential to large financial institutions.

Barofsky, whose criticisms have earned him many enemies in Washington and on Wall Street, will now be in the unfamiliar position of defending financial firms. But he sees the role at Jenner & Block as a "natural extension" of his advocacy work rather than "changing sides," he said. Along with white-collar defense, he plans to work on civil lawsuits as well as help companies with internal investigations and regulatory issues.

"I expect to work not just on the defense side but on the plaintiff side, defending shareholders who have been victimized by institutions in transactions involving complex financial instruments, for example," he said.

Barofsky said Jenner & Block's reputation for taking on powerful interests appealed to him.

Becoming a partner at the firm "was a pretty easy decision for me," Barofsky wrote in a post on LinkedIn discussing the move. The firm "has demonstrated a willingness to stand up to the most powerful and most difficult adversaries," he said, citing the firm's 2010 report on the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. Jenner & Block Chairman Anton Valukas was appointed lead examiner in the Lehman bankruptcy in 2009, and the firm issued a report a year later that was critical of the bank's practices.

Before overseeing the Tarp program, Barofsky spent eight years as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, and headed the office's mortgage-fraud group.

Barofsky, who has been teaching at the NYU School of Law since resigning as the Sigtarp, plans to continue pushing for regulatory reform in his new role, he said in the LinkedIn post. He will be speaking about the financial crisis in Washington, D.C., this week at an event sponsored by the nonprofit Better Markets, he said.