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Russ Ryan

Senior Litigation Counsel


Russ Ryan is a nationally recognized attorney and thought leader with particular interest in the regulatory and enforcement apparatus of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other quasi-governmental regulators overseen by the SEC, including the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), and the various securities industry self-regulatory organizations (SROs). He has decades of experience defending private citizens and businesses caught in the crosshairs of these and other financial regulators.

Russ joined NCLA from the law firm King & Spalding, where he was a partner for 15 years. He left the firm from 2015 to 2018 to serve as Senior Vice President and Deputy Chief of Enforcement at FINRA. Earlier in his career he served for two years as law clerk to a federal judge in the Eastern District of New York and for 10 years as a staff attorney and Assistant Director in the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. He also taught for several semesters as an adjunct professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University.

Russ is a prolific speaker and writer on financial regulation and enforcement. He has spoken at dozens of professional conferences and published scores of commentaries and academic articles, including numerous op-eds in The Wall Street JournalThe Washington PostBloombergLaw360, and elsewhere. His regular column on LinkedIn is called “On SECond Thought: Unconventional Perspectives on Securities Enforcement.”

Russ earned his undergraduate degree from Boston College and his law degree from St. John’s University School of Law, where he was an executive editor of the law review.

Not licensed in Virginia; admitted to practice in New York, the District of Columbia, and select federal jurisdictions.

The Wet-Market Pangolin Hoax

By: Russ Ryan April 18, 2025
COVID-19 | FIve Years Page
One of the worst examples of bureaucratic gaslighting about the Covid-19 coronavirus concerned its origin. Remember when Senator Tom Cotton, in February 2020, became the first public official to say out loud what most ordinary Americans considered plain common sense: that this deadly new coronavirus, believed to have started with an infected bat near Wuhan,…
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License to Steal

By: Russ Ryan April 1, 2025
COVID-19 | FIve Years Page
Federal agencies never let a good crisis go to waste, unless you are talking about wasting taxpayer dollars. Among many ways they exploited the Covid-19 crisis was to raid the treasury and stick taxpayers with the bill for illegal giveaways to their most dependable voting blocks. Consider the Biden Administration’s mass “forgiveness” of outstanding student…
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I Beg Your Pardon? Victims of Unjust Agency “Civil” Prosecution Deserve Mercy Too

By: Russ Ryan February 3, 2025
Blogs
The recent flurry of pardons issued by our outgoing and incoming presidents raises a question I’ve pondered from time to time but never resolved: Can (and should) presidents grant clemency to deserving people who committed no crime but nevertheless find themselves condemned to perpetual misery and impecunity for committing putatively “civil” violations prosecuted by federal…
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