Tom Pahl, a Republican political appointee at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who has led key rulemaking efforts at the agency, will be named its deputy director, sources said.
Pahl, a former longtime regulator at the Federal Trade Commission, has served for two years as the bureau’s policy associate director for research, markets and regulations. The political position was created in 2017 by former acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney, who
Pahl would succeed Brian Johnson as the CFPB's No. 2 official under Director Kathy Kraninger. Johnson left the bureau in early March to become a partner at Alston & Bird.
Leonard Chanin, the deputy to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chair Jelena McWilliams, had served briefly on a part-time basis as the CFPB’s acting deputy director. But he ended his tenure at the CFPB last month and has returned full time to the FDIC, sources said.
As deputy director, Pahl would become a civil servant instead of a political appointee. He is in his second stint at the CFPB after having previously worked for nearly four years as managing counsel in the agency’s office of regulations under former CFPB Director Richard Cordray.
Pahl spent more than two decades at the Federal Trade Commission. Before rejoining the CFPB, Pahl was appointed in 2017 as acting director of the FTC’s bureau of consumer protection. He also has been a partner at the law firm of Arnall Golden Gregory LLP.
