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John Cross

Associate Tax Legislative Counsel

John J. Cross III serves as Associate Tax Legislative Counsel at Treasury (November 2014 to present and 2006 to September 2012).� He specializes in tax-exempt bonds and other tax-advantaged municipal bond programs. At Treasury, Mr. Cross has significant responsibility for tax legislative, budgetary, and regulatory matters in this area generally.� He had a significant role in the agency’s regulatory response to the 2008 financial crisis with respect to the tax-exempt bond market and in implementing numerous municipal bond stimulus tax incentives in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.� From September 2012 until November 2014, Mr. Cross served as the first Director of the Office of Municipal Securities at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which was established under the Dodd-Frank Act as an independent SEC office to oversee the municipal securities market, with a requirement that its Director report directly to the SEC Chairman.From 1994-2006, Mr. Cross was a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Hawkins Delafield & Wood LLP, a national public finance specialty law firm. From 1990-1993, Mr. Cross served in the Financial Products group of the IRS Chief Counsel’s office, where he was one of the principal authors of the arbitrage regulations on investment restrictions on tax-exempt bonds.� From 1981-1990, Mr. Cross was in private practice in Atlanta, Georgia.Mr. Cross has a B.A. Degree from Brown University (1978), a J.D. Degree from Vanderbilt University Law School (1981), where he was a member of the Vanderbilt Law Review, and an L.L.M. in Taxation from Georgetown University Law Center (1988).� Mr. Cross has served as Chair of the American Bar Association (“ABA”) Section of Taxation’s Tax-Exempt Financing Committee (2003-2005) and Chair of the National Association of Bond Lawyers’ General Tax Committee (1995-1998) and a member of its Board of Directors (2001-2004).