Republican President-elect Donald Trump nominated former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton to serve as Manhattan's top federal prosecutor on Thursday.
Clayton, an attorney at Sullivan & Cromwell who specializes in mergers and capital-raising, is a political independent who developed a reputation while at the SEC for trying to forge consensus with the agency's Democratic commissioners.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York, as the unit is formally known, declined to comment.
Clayton is likely to be seen as a somewhat unconventional pick for the office known for high-profile financial crime prosecutions, as he does not have any criminal law experience.
During Trump's first term, Clayton was briefly nominated by the president in July 2020 to replace Geoffrey Berman, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, who was fired by Trump after refusing to step aside.
At the time, Berman's office was investigating Rudolph Giuliani, Trump's former attorney.