Chief Litigation Counsel Matthew C. Solomon to Leave SEC

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Matthew C. Solomon, the Chief Litigation Counsel for the SEC’s Enforcement Division, will leave the agency early next month.

Mr. Solomon has led the Enforcement Division’s litigation program since September 2013, managing cases pending both in federal courts and administrative proceedings at the Commission.  The trial unit has 48 attorneys at the SEC’s Washington headquarters as well as more than 100 additional litigators throughout the agency’s 11 regional offices.

During Mr. Solomon’s tenure as Chief Litigation Counsel, the agency received favorable verdicts in 22 federal jury trials, including the SEC’s cases against two brothers accused of violating the laws governing ownership and trading of securities by corporate insiders, its insider trading cases against two brokerage employees and a pharmaceutical executive and a U.K. resident, and a first-ever case against a recidivist municipality and one of its city officials.  The agency also enjoyed strong successes in administrative proceedings before the SEC’s administrative law judges.

“Matt has won the respect of every trial and investigative attorney in the Enforcement Division with his keen intellect, strong strategic sense, and outstanding trial skills,” said Andrew J. Ceresney, Director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division.  “He has bolstered our already strong litigation program, and been an important reason for our success at trial over the last few years.”

Mr. Solomon said, “Our enforcement program has been built on a strong partnership between investigative staff and litigators who are prepared to go the distance at trial.  I am proud of the strong record we have built over the last few years litigating some of the Enforcement Division’s most complex and challenging cases.”

Mr. Solomon joined the SEC in June 2012 as the Enforcement Division’s Deputy Chief Litigation Counsel.  Before joining the SEC, Mr. Solomon served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and was later elevated to chief of that office’s fraud unit, where he supervised 25 prosecutors handling hundreds of white-collar criminal matters, including securities fraud offenses.  Prior to his work in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Mr. Solomon was a trial attorney in the public integrity section of the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice and, before that, he served as a counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.  He began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge James Robertson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and then as a law clerk for Judge Dennis Jacobs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.  Mr. Solomon received his B.A. magna cum laude from Wesleyan University, and his J.D. magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was notes & comments editor of the Georgetown Law Journal.

Following Mr. Solomon’s departure, David Gottesman, the Enforcement Division’s Deputy Chief Litigation Counsel, and Bridget Fitzpatrick, a supervisory trial counsel in the Enforcement Division, will serve as acting Co-Chief Litigation Counsels.