PERSON: Jay Clayton

President

Walter Joseph “Jay” Clayton III (born July 11, 1966) is an American attorney who has served as the acting United States attorney for the Southern District of New York since 2025. Clayton served as the chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from May 4, 2017, until December 23, 2020. He was nominated for the position by President Donald Trump.

Clayton was born at Fort Eustis in Newport News, Virginia. He grew up near Hershey, Pennsylvania, where his father worked for the Hershey Company, and Wallingford, Pennsylvania. Clayton graduated from Strath Haven High School in 1984. After attending Lafayette College, where he was a member of the soccer team, Clayton transferred to the University of Pennsylvania where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree in 1988, and received the Thouron Award for post-graduate study in the United Kingdom.

He received a Bachelor of Arts (promoted to a Master of Arts, per tradition) in economics from King’s College, Cambridge, in 1990. He then attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School, from which he graduated cum laude and Order of the Coif in 1993 with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree.

During college and graduate school, Clayton was a member of the Ocean City Beach Patrol and Penn Law rugby team, an intern with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia and U.S. representative Curt Weldon, and an employee of United Engineers and Constructors.

>> Wikipedia