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Robinhood’s top lawyer is joining FINRA’s Board of Governors with three other appointments, including a former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
In addition to being Robinhood Markets’ chief legal, compliance and corporate affairs officer, Dan Gallagher is a former commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Additionally, Gallagher was rumored to be a finalist to run the agency during Trump’s second term, before withdrawing his name from consideration in late 2024.
Gallagher’s appointment brings a strong advocate for crypto regulation reform (and critic of digital asset enforcement) into FINRA’s leadership.
FINRA is overseen by a 22-member Board of Governors, comprising 12 seats for public members, 10 seats for industry participants and one for FINRA’s CEO (currently Robert Cook). Governors are appointed to three-year terms and are limited to serving no more than two consecutive terms.
According to Cook, the new appointments will help the regulator adapt its approach “to meet the evolving needs of investors and the markets” to “provide strategic oversight and guidance in an increasingly complex financial landscape.”
Gallagher first joined the SEC in 2006 as counsel to Commissioner (and current Chair) Paul Atkins, and President Barack Obama appointed him as a Republican member of the commission from 2011 to 2015. After leaving the agency, he briefly served as president of Potomak Global Partners, a financial services consulting firm founded by Atkins.
After stints at pharmaceutical company Mylan N.V. and the law firm WilmerHale, Gallagher joined Robinhood in 2020. He was considered to succeed Gary Gensler as SEC Chair after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, but opted out to remain at Robinhood.
During his tenure at Robinhood, Gallagher has been a fierce critic of the federal regulators’ approach to digital asset enforcement. In his testimony before the U.S. House Financial Services Subcommittee on Digital Assets in 2024, Gallagher claimed that the U.S. digital assets markets have had to contend with “innovation-killing federal regulatory uncertainty,” and that the commission’s “scorched earth” approach had dire consequences.
“Regulation by enforcement is bad for American consumers who want greater access to digital assets, bad for innovation in the blockchain and digital asset industries, and bad for the already-eroding competitive position of the U.S. with regard to digital asset markets,” he said.
Gallagher also criticized the SEC’s probe into Robinhood’s cryptocurrency operations during Genlser’s tenure. After the SEC closed the investigation in February 2025, Gallagher stated that the SEC shouldn’t have opened a case, and any enforcement action against Robinhood would fail.
In addition to Gallagher, FINRA’s new Board of Governors appointments include Rostin Benham, who chaired the CFTC between 2021 and 2025 (and served as a CFTC Commissioner since 2017).
Additionally, FINRA brought on Tim Carter, former chief financial officer of Piper Sandler, and Heather Traeger, general counsel and chief compliance officer at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, one of the country’s largest public pension plans.