Trump Picks Paul Atkins to Run the S.E.C.

President-elect Donald J. Trump picked Paul Atkins to serve as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, turning to a pro-business conservative and former regulator to run the agency that is in charge of protecting investors from fraud and malfeasance on Wall Street.

Mr. Trump made the announcement in a post on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday.

Mr. Atkins, 66, who was an S.E.C. commissioner under President George W. Bush, is a well-known, and generally admired, figure in Washington legal circles and the securities regulatory community. In the early 1990s he worked at the S.E.C. during both Republican and Democratic administrations.

He is also seen as a strong advocate for looser regulation of crypto assets — an issue that Mr. Trump adopted as part of his campaign.

Shortly after his term as S.E.C. commissioner ended in 2008, Mr. Atkins founded Patomak Global Partners, a financial services consulting firm. Patomak provides advisory services to banks and investment firms on regulatory and compliance matters. More recently, the firm has advised clients on issues related to crypto and digital assets.

Patomak is an influential firm in the financial world and many lawyers who have worked at the S.E.C. are familiar with Mr. Atkins. Tyler Gellasch, a former S.E.C. lawyer who runs the Healthy Markets Association, an organization that advocates greater securities regulation, called Mr. Atkins the “godfather of Republican capital markets policy.”

Mr. Atkins, a lawyer, has been playing an active role in helping to draft “best practices” for crypto trading platforms as co-chair of the Token Alliance, which is part of the Digital Chamber of Commerce. He is also on the advisory board for Securitize, a digital asset firm that promotes the use of digital tokens.