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As always, the Federalist Society takes no position on particular legal or public policy issues; all expressions of opinion are those of the speaker.
Head of U.S. Policy and Strategic Advocacy, Electric Coin Company
Paul Brigner is the Head of U.S. Policy and Strategic Advocacy at the Electric Coin Company. He has served in senior level technology policy and government relations roles for the last eighteen years with another ten years of hands-on technical experience at the beginning his career after serving in the United States Army.
He holds an MBA from the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University and a JD from the Georgetown University Law Center. He received a Bachelors degree from Stephen F. Austin State University where he was named the Outstanding Computer Science Graduate.
Senior Counsel and Director of Global Regulatory Matters, ConsenSys Software
Bill Hughes is senior counsel and director of global regulatory matters for ConsenSys Software, the leading Ethereum blockchain software company. Bill focuses on the diverse and ever evolving crypto global regulatory landscape, and the legal and public policy issues with which ConsenSys and the broader crypto ecosystem is grappling.
Bill joined ConsenSys after serving as an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice, where he managed, among other things, the Department’s work on prospective regulations, legislative proposals, and policies across a broad spectrum of legal and operational issues. He worked closely with the White House and other federal agencies on regulatory and policy initiatives and coordinated DOJ’s law enforcement response to COVID-19-related consumer fraud and money laundering. Bill also has served at the White House, where he oversaw various operational components. Bill began his career by clerking for a federal judge in New York and litigating with the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. Bill received his JD from the University of Virginia School of Law and his BA from Vanderbilt University.
General Counsel, Espresso Systems
Michael Mosier is General Counsel at Espresso Systems, which is developing configurable privacy for digital assets with decentralized private computation. He served as Acting Director, Deputy Director, and the first Digital Innovation Officer of the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). He also was Counselor (for Cybersecurity & Emerging Technology) to the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury.
Previously, Michael was Chief Technical Counsel at Chainalysis; an Associate Director of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control; a Deputy Chief at the Department of Justice’s Money Laundering Section; and White House National Security Council Director for Transnational Organized Crime. He began his public service with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center.
Associate Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Associate Professor of Law J.W. Verret joined the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University faculty in 2008. In 2013, he took leave for two years to serve as the Chief Economist and Senior Counsel for the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services. He received his JD and MA in Public Policy from Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, respectively, in 2006. While in law school, Professor Verret served an Olin Fellowship in Law and Economics at the Harvard Program on Corporate Governance under the guidance of Prof. Lucian Bebchuk.
Professor Verret then served as a law clerk for Vice-Chancellor John W. Noble of the Delaware Court of Chancery. Prior to joining the faculty at Scalia Law, Professor Verret was an associate in the SEC Enforcement Defense Practice Group at Skadden, Arps in Washington, D.C. He has written extensively on corporate law topics, including Delaware's Guidance, co-written with Chief Justice Myron T. Steele of the Delaware Supreme Court. His academic work has been featured in the Yale Journal on Regulation, The Business Lawyer, the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, and the Virginia Law and Business Review. Professor Verret was selected by the Northwestern Law School Searle Center on Law, Regulation, and Economic Growth for a 2009-2010 Searle-Kaufmann Research Fellowship.
Professor Verret is also a Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center Working Group on Financial Markets, where he regularly briefs Congressional staff, members of Congress, SEC Commissioners and other financial regulatory agencies on financial regulation topics. He also directs the Corporate Federalism Initiative, where he obtains research grants for a network of students and faculty scholars who study the division between states and the federal government as sources of corporate law. Professor Verret has been invited to testify before various House and Senate Committees four times during the financial crisis of 2009 regarding all of the central provisions of the Obama Administration's 2009 financial regulatory reform proposals. For a full list of Professor Verret's C-Span appearances, including testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, see http://www.c-spanvideo.org/jwverret.
Professor Verret has been an invited panelist for various television appearances, including an interview on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Professor Verret has been quoted in various media on financial regulation and corporate law topics, including the New York Times, CNN Money, the CNN Political Ticker, CNBC, ABC News, Investor's Business Daily, ESPN.com, The American Banker, The American Lawyer, The Huffington Post, CBS.com, and AP News. Professor Verret's op-eds have been featured in Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, The Orange County Register, and The Wall Street Journal. Professor Verret is also a regular guest contributor to three of the most noted corporate law and financial regulation law blogs: the Harvard Law School Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation Forum, Deallawyers.com, and The Conglomerate.
