Kristin Johnson

President Joseph R. Biden nominated Professor Johnson to take on two prominent roles as a financial market regulator. In September 2021, President Biden nominated Professor Johnson to serve as a CFTC Commissioner, and, on March 30, 2022, after being unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate, she was sworn in to serve as a CFTC Commissioner. In the summer of 2024, President Biden nominated Professor Johnson to serve as the Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at the United States Department of the Treasury.  

Professor Johnson is a nationally 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. She is an internationally recognized expert on financial markets regulation and corporate governance, compliance, and risk management. Her recent work examines the implications of emerging innovative technologies including distributed digital ledger technologies that enable the creation of digital assets and intermediaries and artificial intelligence technologies that target commercial and consumer financial transactions, transfers, and assessments.

Professor Johnson has presented her scholarship at several of the most prestigious academic institutions in the nation including, among others, the University of Michigan Law School, Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, the University of California (Berkeley), and Vanderbilt Law School. Her scholarship has been published or accepted for publication in, among other journals, the University of Chicago Law Review, Boston University Law Review, William & Mary Law Review, George Washington Law Review, Fordham Law Review, Washington & Lee Law Review, and the University of Illinois Law Review.  She is the author of a forthcoming book the Cambridge University Press Handbook on Artificial Intelligence & The Law and Artificial Intelligence & The Law: Cases and Materials.

In April of 2021, she testified at a hearing before the United States House of Representatives Financial Services Committee Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Financial Institutions entitled Banking Innovation or Regulatory Evasion? Exploring Trends in Financial Institution Charters. The single-panel hearing discussed policy considerations with respect to banking charters and explored disintermediation in legacy financial markets such as banking and the provision of clearing and custody services. In July of 2019, she testified before the United States House of Representatives Financial Services Committee Task Force on Financial Technology and the Task Force on Artificial Intelligence entitled Examining the Use of Alternative Data exploring the implications of integrating artificial intelligence in financial technology (fintech) platforms. 

Prior to joining the Commission, Professor Johnson held endowed professorships at Emory University and Tulane University Law Schools and visiting professorships at prestigious law schools around the nation. She taught courses in the regulation of securities and derivatives markets, financial institutions, including courses on fintech, the development of blockchain technologies and artificial intelligence, as well as corporations and ethical leadership. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute, an American Bar Foundation Fellow, and former Chair of the Securities Regulation Section and the Executive Committee of the Business Associations and a member of the Executive Committee of the 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. Commissioner Johnson also clerked for the Honorable Joseph A. Greenaway, Jr. of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals during his tenure on the District Court. Before attending law school, Commissioner Johnson served as an analyst in the Asset Management Division at Goldman Sachs. 

Commissioner Johnson has a BS with honors  in comparative economics from Georgetown University Walsh School of Foreign Service and a JD from the University of Michigan Law School where she served as a senior editor on the Michigan Law Review and received the Clara Belfield and Henry Bates International Research Fellowship.