Former Enforcement Director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Thomas Ward, Joins Sidley
Sidley Austin LLP is pleased to announce that Thomas Ward, who previously served as Enforcement Director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), has joined the firm as a partner in the Banking and Financial Services Group in Washington, D.C.
As the CFPB’s chief law enforcement officer, Ward was responsible for enforcing more than 20 enumerated consumer financial statutes and the Consumer Financial Protection Act. He established and supervised the strategy in hundreds of active investigations and cases prosecuted by the CFPB’s Office of Enforcement and managed the agency’s 165 enforcement trial lawyers, investigators, and staff. During his tenure, Ward commissioned and directed an initiative to review and centralize the Office of Enforcement’s investigative, litigation, and negotiation processes and best practices, establishing the roadmap that the Office of Enforcement uses in each of its cases and investigations. Under his leadership, in 2020, the CFPB brought the second highest number of enforcement actions since its inception, secured its fourth highest amount of redress, prosecuted its largest and most complex litigation docket, and recommitted to enforcing the Fair Lending laws, including filing the first contested Fair Lending action in the CFPB’s history.
Prior to his service at the CFPB, Ward served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), where he was counsel in many of the highest-profile, highest-value cases of the Consumer Protection, Torts, Commercial Litigation, Federal Programs, and Appellate branches. At DOJ, Ward managed more than 400 attorneys and staff and oversaw an active docket of more than 1,000 cases spanning the breadth of the Civil Division’s jurisdiction, including complex Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act, False Claims Act, and Federal Tort Claims Act cases and investigations.
For nearly two decades prior to his service with the government, Ward was an enforcement and litigation partner at a leading global litigation firm where he represented clients in complex enforcement investigations and cases, commercial litigation, and criminal proceedings. Ward served as lead counsel for international financial institutions and investment banks, multiple Am Law 100 law firms, the World Bank, and major global corporations.
