Kristin Johnson

Kristin Johnson is the Lyle T. Alverson Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School. Professor Johnson is also serving as a visiting professor of law at the London School of Economics and a research fellow at Cambridge University’s Judge School of Business Centre for Alternative Finance. Before joining GW Law as a tenured faculty member, Kristin was nominated by the President and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as a Commissioner of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC or the Commission). During her service as a CFTC Commissioner, Professor Johnson was nominated by the President to serve as the Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at the United States Department of the Treasury.

As a CFTC Commissioner, Professor Johnson helped direct the Commission’s policy, enforcement, and rulemaking responsibilities as the Commission exercised regulatory oversight of the $20 trillion derivatives markets. She helped shape significant agency actions affecting futures and swaps markets, exchanges and trading platforms, clearing organizations, derivatives intermediaries, and market participants. As a financial market regulator, Professor Johnson’s work encompassed derivatives law and compliance, market structure, clearing and systemic risk, rulemaking, enforcement matters, and interagency, international, and industry engagement. She advises on innovation in derivatives and futures markets matters related to swaps trading, clearing, and reporting requirements, customer protection, and the regulation of futures, options, and swaps markets.

Professor Johnson is an internationally recognized expert on financial markets risk management law and policy with specialization in the regulation of complex financial products including the origination, distribution, and secondary market trading, clearing, and settlement of securities and derivatives.

Her recent work examines the implications of emerging innovative technologies including blockchain or distributed digital ledger technologies, digital assets or cryptocurrencies, and artificial intelligence technologies.

Prior to joining the Commission, Professor Johnson held endowed professorships at Emory University and Tulane University Law Schools, where she served as Associate Dean of Faculty Research. She has taught courses in the regulation of securities and derivatives markets, financial institutions, including courses on financial technology, the development of blockchain technologies, the creation of cryptocurrencies or digital assets, and the introduction of artificial intelligence in financial markets.

She is an elected member of the American Law Institute, an American Bar Foundation Fellow, and former Chair of the Securities Regulation Section and Executive Committee member of the Business Associations and Financial Institutions and Consumer Financial Services Sections of the Association of American Law Schools.

Prior to entering the academy, Professor Johnson served as Vice President and Assistant General Counsel in the Treasury Services Division at JP Morgan, supporting private funds cash management services, and as a corporate associate at Simpson, Thacher, and Bartlett LLP’s New York and London offices, where she represented issuers and underwriters in domestic and international debt and equity offerings, lenders and borrowers in banking and credit matters, and private equity firms and publicly-traded companies in mergers and acquisitions. Professor Johnson clerked for the Honorable Joseph A. Greenaway, Jr., elevated to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, during his tenure on the New Jersey District Court. Before attending law school, Professor Johnson served as an analyst at Goldman Sachs.

Professor Johnson has a BS with honors in international economics from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and a JD from the University of Michigan Law School, where she served as a senior editor of the Michigan Law Review.

In the News