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V. Gerard (Jerry) Comizio is the associate director of the Business Law Program at WCL. He is also the director of the º£½Ç»»ÆÞWCL Digital Asset Law Project, which is designed to foster a deeper understanding of the legal, regulatory, policy and compliance issues raised by the emerging world of digital assets and other transformative financial technologies. He teaches courses on U.S. and international banking law, regulation of financial institutions and business law compliance and ethics, and teaches one of the firstÌý digital asset law courses in the United States.

Professor Comizio is a leading authority on financial services regulatory, transactional, and compliance matters. He has had extensive experience in private practice representing a wide range of financial services companies, including both domestic and foreign banking organizations, non-bank financial institutions, online banking, fintech companies, virtual currency exchanges and private equity firms. Prior to that he was for a number of years a senior federal financial services regulator.

Professor Comizio has written extensively about current issues in financial services regulation. He is the author of International Banking Law (West Academic 2016), one of the first major casebooks on international banking law issues. He is also the contributing author to three books on financial services issues: Winning Legal Strategies for Banking Law, Aspatore Books (2005); The Bank Investor Relations Handbook, America’s Community Bankers (2003); and The Bank Founders Guidebook, SNL Securities (1999).

In addition, Professor Comizio also focuses on the emerging legal, regulatory and policy framework governingÌý digital asset currencies, business activities and investments, and other transformative financial technologies. He currently teaches one of the first digital asset law courses in the United States, which explores the emerging legal and regulatory framework under the corporate, securities stock offering, broker-dealer, investment fund, commodities, banking, money transmission, anti-money laundering, fintech, tax, antitrust and commercial laws governing digital asset law and block chain activities.

Professor Comizio has written extensively on a wide range of digital asset law issues including Virtual Currencies: Growing Regulatory Framework and Challenges in the Emerging Fintech Ecosystem}, 21 N.C. Banking Inst. 131 (2017) , and The cyber threat looming over virtual currencies, American Banker (May 6, 2021). He is the author ofÌý Virtual Currency Law: The Emerging Legal and Regulatory Framework, Wolters Kluwer/Aspen Law Publishing (2022), one of the first textbook treatises on digital asset and blockchain law.

Professor Comizio also is a founder and administers º£½Ç»»ÆÞWCL’s Business Law Compliance and Ethics Certificate program. Covering one of the fastest-growing areas of business law, the Compliance and Ethics Certificate enables students with a special interest in business law to earn a certificate that provides a core competency and a deeper understanding of corporate, financial services, and ESG compliance laws and regulations, compliance strategies, and skills-based training.

Professor Comizio has been featured in the American Bankers annual Washington Insiders Survey of the 25 Most Influential People Involved in Financial Services Regulatory Issues. He also has regularly appeared on television, print and internet media, and radio discussing current financial services regulatory issues, including CBS Evening News, National Public Radio, Fox News, Bloomberg TV, Wall Street Journal Online, Dow Jones Online and CBS radio, and has been widely quoted on financial services issues in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today.

Professor Comizio joined º£½Ç»»ÆÞWCL from Fried Frank Shriver Harris and Jacobsen LLP, where he was a partner and chaired their banking practice. Prior to that, he was a partner and chaired the banking practice at Paul Hastings LLP, and was managing partner of the DC Office of Thacher Proffit and Wood LLP. Prior to private practice, he was for many years the deputy general counsel of the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Thrift Supervision (currently the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) and its predecessor, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, and a senior attorney in the Division of the Corporation Finance in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In 1994, he led an interagency task force related to the U.S. Senate and House financial services committee hearings held in response to widely publicized abuses in the initial public offering market for bank mutual to stock conversion offerings. This task force was widely credited with initiating comprehensive regulatory reform in the US of this area at the federal and state level.

Professor Comizio has served as a member of the Governing Committee of the U.S. Conference on Consumer Finance Law and the Board of Advisors of the University of North Carolina Law School Center for Banking and Finance. He is also the former chairman of the Trusts and Investments Subcommittee of the American Bar Association Banking Law Committee and the Advisory Board of the George Washington Law School Center for Law Economics and Finance. In 2020 he served as a member of the Economic Policy team’s Financial Institutions subcommittee for the Biden-Harris campaign.

Professor Comizio received his masters degree in international relations from the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University in 2020, his LLM in financial services regulationÌý from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1983, his J.D. degree from the Pace University School of Law in 1980 where he was case and comments editor, and his BA from Fordham University in 1977. He is admitted to the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court, New York and the District of Columbia.