Acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks is expected to be nominated by President Donald Trump for a five-year term as the head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the White House announced Tuesday.
The nomination (and any others pending) will expire with the 116th Congress, so the Senate has only a brief period in which to act. And even if confirmed, Brooks can be fired at will so could be replaced fairly quickly by a President Joe Biden.
Brooks joined the OCC April 1 as first deputy comptroller and was named acting comptroller in May following the departure of former Comptroller Joseph P. Otting. (Otting resigned his post just after the OCC’s release of a final, revised Community Reinvestment Act [CRA] regulation.)
Before joining the OCC, Brooks served as chief legal officer of Coinbase Global, Inc., a digital asset exchange and custodian. He has also served as executive vice president and general counsel of Fannie Mae; vice chairman of OneWest Bank, N.A.; and managing partner of the Washington, D.C., office of the global law firm O’Melveny & Myers LLP. Brooks also served on the boards of directors of Fannie Mae and Avant, Inc., and was an advisor to several financial technology startups.