V. Gerard Comizio
V. Gerard (Jerry) Comizio is the associate director of the Business Law Program at AUWCL. He teaches courses on U.S. and international banking law, virtual currency law, regulation of financial institutions and U.S. business associations. Professor Comizio is a leading authority on financial services regulatory, transactional, and compliance matters.
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; The Bank Investor Relations Handbook, America’s Community Bankers; and The Bank Founder’s Guidebook, SNL Securities.
He 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 virtual currency’s emerging legal and regulatory framework under the corporate, securities, commodities, banking, money transmission, anti-money laundering, financial technology, tax, and commercial laws. He is the author of Virtual Currencies: Growing Regulatory Framework and Challenges in the Emerging Fintech Ecosystem Wolters Kluwer (2022), one of the first legal textbooks on crypto law.
He 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,” and has regularly appeared on television, internet media, and radio discussing current financial services regulatory issues, including NPR, Fox News, Bloomberg TV, 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, Los Angeles Times and other major newspapers and publications.
Professor Comizio joined AUWCL from many years of private practice at two major law firms where he chaired their global financial services practices. 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 prior to that, senior counsel at the Securities and Exchange Commission in the Division of Corporation Finance.
He 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.
Professor Comizio received his master’s degree in global policy from the School of Advanced International studies, Johns Hopkins University in 2020, his LLM 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 of the law review, and his BA from Fordham University in 1977.