V. Gerard (Jerry) Comizio

Professor of Law, American University
V. Gerard (Jerry) Comizio, of American University, teaches courses on U.S. and international banking law, virtual currency law, regulation of financial institutions and business law compliance and ethics.

Professor Comizio is a leading authority on financial services regulatory, transactional, and compliance matters. He had extensive experience in private practice representing a wide range of financial services companies, including both domestic and foreign banking organizations, non-bank financial institutions, online banking, fintech companies, virtual currency exchanges and private equity firms.

Professor Comizio has written extensively about current issues in financial services regulation. He is the author of International Banking Law (West Academic 2016), one of the first major casebooks on international banking law issues. He is also the contributing author to three books on financial services issues: Winning Legal Strategies for Banking Law, Aspatore Books (2005); The Bank Investor Relations Handbook, America’s Community Bankers (2003); and The Bank Founder’s Guidebook, SNL Securities (1999).

Professor Comizio also focuses on the emerging legal regulatory and policy framework governing virtual currency activities and other transformative financial technologies. He currently teaches one of the first virtual currency law courses in the country, which explores the emerging legal and regulatory framework under the corporate, securities, commodities, banking, money transmission, anti-money laundering, fintech, tax, and commercial laws governing virtual currency and block chain activities.

Professor Comizio has written extensively on a wide range of virtual currency law issues including Virtual Currencies: Growing Regulatory Framework and Challenges in the Emerging Fintech Ecosystem}, 21 N.C. Banking Inst. 131 (2017) https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/ncbi/vol21/iss1/10/, and The cyber threat looming over virtual currencies, American Banker (May 6, 2021). He is also author of Virtual Currency Law: The Emerging Legal and Regulatory Framework, Wolters Kluwer (2022), one of the first major casebooks on digital asset law.

Professor Comizio has been featured in the American Banker’s annual “Washington Insider’s Survey of the 25 Most Influential People Involved in Financial Services Regulatory Issues.” He also has regularly appeared on television, internet media, and radio discussing current financial services regulatory issues, including NPR, Fox News, Bloomberg TV, Wall Street Journal Online, Dow Jones Online and CBS radio, and has been widely quoted on financial services issues in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Financial Times, Reuters, Bloomberg and other major newspapers and publications. He has been consistently recognized by Chambers, Legal 500 and other major law firm practice rankings.

Professor Comizio joined AUWCL from Fried Frank Shriver Harris and Jacobsen LLP, where he was a partner and chaired their banking practice. Prior to that, he was a partner and chaired the banking practice at Paul Hastings LLP, and was managing partner of the DC Office of Thacher Proffit and Wood LLP. Prior to private practice, he was for many years the deputy general counsel of the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Thrift Supervision (currently the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) and its predecessor, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, and a senior attorney in the Division of the Corporation Finance in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In 1994, he led an interagency task force related to the U.S. Senate and House financial services committee hearings held in response to widely publicized abuses in the initial public offering market for bank mutual to stock conversions. This task force was widely credited with initiating comprehensive regulatory reform of this area at the federal and state level.

Professor Comizio has served as a member of the Governing Committee of the U.S. Conference on Consumer Finance Law and the Board of Advisors of the University of North Carolina Law School Center for Banking and Finance. He is also the former chairman of the Trusts and Investments Subcommittee of the American Bar Association’s Banking Law committee and the Advisory Board of the George Washington Law School Center for Law Economics and Finance. He recently served as a member of the Economic Policy team’s Financial Institutions subcommittee for the Biden-Harris campaign.

Professor Comizio received his master’s degree in global policy from the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, in 2020, his LLM in Financial Services Regulation from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1983, his JD from the Pace University School of Law in 1980 where he was case and comments editor and his BA from Fordham University in 1977.