Gould confirmed as OCC head

Jonathan Gould OCC
Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg

WASHINGTON — The Senate confirmed Jonathan Gould to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in a 45-5 vote on Thursday. 

Gould's leadership at the OCC is expected to usher in a friendly wave of crypto policy at the agency, which under the Biden administration urged caution when it came to banks interacting with stablecoin and crypto offerings.

Gould, in comment letters during his time as a partner at the law firm Jones Day and in his testimony in front of the Senate Banking Committee, signaled a more lax approach. 

He said during the confirmation hearing that banks and regulators shouldn't discriminate against customers based on politics, a reference to charges that former President Biden encouraged banks to "debank" conservative customers — a claim that has been embraced by President Trump and his Republican allies but that Biden-era regulators have denied

"I think it is unacceptable for banks or regulators to discriminate [against] customers on the basis of the customer's politics or religion, or the mere fact that they are engaged in a lawful activity that is for whatever reason, politically disfavored," Gould said.

He also spoke about banks' continued relevance during that hearing. 

"The national banking system is today one of the crown jewels of American finance," Gould said in his written opening remarks for his confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Banking Committee. "But neither it nor its continued relevance should be taken for granted."

Gould also promised further deregulation. 

Despite bipartisan support and backing from bank trade groups, the Treasury scrapped a corporate ownership reporting rule meant to expose shell companies and aid financial compliance. But the problems that spurred the law's passage still remain.

Treasury building

"If banks are to serve their role supporting the U.S. economy, they must be allowed to engage in prudent risk-taking," he said in his opening remarks. "But in the years since 2008, bank regulators have at times tried to eliminate rather than manage risk, frustrating the ability of banks to fulfill their function. This blinkered approach to risk management has implications for the cost and availability of credit, the system's ability to absorb shocks, and its adoption of new technologies and embrace of innovation." 

Gould's confirmation marks one of few confirmations of permanent financial regulatory agency heads during the second Trump administration. With Gould's confirmation, acting OCC head Rodney Hood will step down from the top spot at the agency. Other bank regulatory spots, like the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., continue to be led by acting leaders. Former FDIC board member Jonathan McKernan was tapped to head the CFPB at the same time Gould was nominated to lead the OCC, but McKernan was later nominated to a senior post at the Treasury Department instead.

Gould already has a history at the agency and is a well-known quantity in bank regulatory circles. 

Gould was a top staffer on the Senate Banking Committee — chaired at the time by Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala. — when he was tapped in 2018 to be No. 2 at the OCC under former Comptroller Joseph Otting. He served as the OCC's senior deputy comptroller and chief counsel overseeing all the agency's legal functions including regulating banks. 

During his tenure, the OCC eased regulations of small banks with the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act and sought reforms to the Volcker rule, including streamlined exemptions for underwriting, market-making and hedging activities. The OCC chartered the first fintech and crypto banks under his watch and recognized crypto-related activities as permissible — a topic of great interest to the second Trump administration. 

In 2022, Gould was named chief legal officer of Bitfury, a bitcoin and crypto company based in Amsterdam, where former acting OCC Director Brian Brooks was CEO. He then joined the law firm Jones Day as a partner later that year. He also has been a director at BlackRock and at Promontory Financial Group.

The banking industry has been uniformly supportive of Gould's nomination. 

"We congratulate Jonathan Gould on his confirmation to serve as the next comptroller of the currency and wish him well in his critical new role," said Rob Nichols, president and CEO of the American Bankers Association. "We look forward to working with Comptroller Gould on a number of important regulatory issues in the years ahead, including advancing a rational regulatory framework that promotes a resilient and healthy national banking system and upholding the OCC's commitment to national bank preemption." 

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