President Trump has sent to the Senate the nominations of Jonathan Gould to be comptroller of the currency and Jonathan McKernan to be director of the CFPB, according to news reports.
Gould, a financial regulatory attorney in private practice, was previously senior deputy comptroller and chief counsel at the OCC from 2018 to 2021 and a top staffer at the Senate Banking Committee. McKernan was from 2023 until this week the appointed director on the FDIC board; he stepped down when the appointments of Acting Comptroller Rodney Hood and Acting CFPB Director Russell Vought tipped the FDIC’s partisan composition out of balance.
ABA President and CEO Rob Nichols congratulated Gould and McKernan. “We look forward to working with Gould to put in place a rational regulatory framework that ensures banks can continue to meet the needs of their customers, clients and communities,” he said. Of McKernan, he added that “his experience at the FDIC, FHFA, Treasury and on the Hill make him an excellent choice to lead the bureau in a new direction. While our members share the CFPB’s mission to protect consumers, it’s time for the bureau to operate within the statutory guardrails established by Congress, pursue policies that actually help Americans looking for financial products and services, and promote responsible innovation. We are hopeful that McKernan’s nomination marks an important turning point for the bureau.”
Also included in the batch of nominations was former Commodity Futures Trading Commissioner Brian Quintenz, who has been nominated as CFTC chairman, and Senate staffer Luke Pettit, nominated to be assistant secretary of the Treasury for financial institutions.
