Shamoil Shipchandler, who resigned Friday as director of the Fort Worth Regional Office of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, is joining the Dallas office of Jones Day as a partner in its white-collar defense practice.
Shipchandler joins his predecessor, David Woodcock, as back-to-back SEC leaders to go to Jones Day in Texas. Woodcock, who also served as chair of the SEC’s Financial Reporting and Auditing Task Force, is Jones Day’s head of litigation in Dallas.
A former white-collar federal prosecutor for a decade in the Eastern District of Texas, Shipchandler will join Jones Day at the end of February. He will be unable to work on any SEC matters for a year and is barred for life from handling SEC cases that he worked on during his three-and-a-half years at the regulatory agency.
In a wide-ranging exclusive interview Sunday, Shipchandler told The Texas Lawbook that he loved his time at the SEC, that he “tried to be tough but fair” to the companies, but he says the lack of resources and staffing is having an impact.
“It was the right time,” for him to leave the federal agency, he says. “I always thought that I would stay in the position for about the same lifespan as a U.S. Attorney. It is healthy to let someone come in with new ideas. It’s important for senior positions to change.”
And he was especially tired of the daily 110-mile round trip drive from his home in Allen to the SEC’s office in downtown Fort Worth.
Shipchandler says the biggest challenge he faced was the reduction in staff, especially among lawyers in the SEC’s enforcement division in Fort Worth.
More than a dozen experienced senior lawyers have departed the office since 2016. But the agency has a hiring freeze due in place to congressional budget restraints.
“The biggest challenge was the lack of resources,” he says. “You deal the hand that’s given you and it requires people to do more with less. At some point, there is a tip.”
Is the tipping point near?
“I’m not sure,” he says.
Shipchandler says he achieved several successes during his time at the SEC, including making decision-making more transparent, quickening the pace that cases were investigated and litigated and giving his team “the tools they need to succeed.”
In late November, Shipchandler started informing his superiors in Washington, D.C. that he planned to leave. But something unexpected happened on Dec. 26. The federal government shutdown and all but three of the SEC employees in the Fort Worth office were sent home.
“Basically, I haven’t had a day off since Thanksgiving,” he says.
Shipchandler says he chose Jones Day because of its national and global footprint and because he felt he would enjoy working with the lawyers he knows at the firm.
A graduate of Cornell Law School, Shipchandler developed a specialization in cybersecurity and cryptocurrency. He joins a Jones Day office already stacked with experienced white-collar defense attorneys, including Woodcock.
The firm’s other lawyers in the specialty practice include former federal prosecutor Jay Johnson, former state prosecutor Josh Roseman and Wes Loegering, who played a prominent role in Walmart’s internal investigation into whether the retail giant violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act – an inquiry initiated by Woodcock when he was SEC regional director.
“Shamoil’s valuable experience furthers our world-class depth in white collar, securities, and data privacy and cybersecurity law practice in Texas and beyond,” said Hilda Galvan, partner-in-charge of Jones Day’s Dallas outpost. “We now have the two most recent regional directors to provide our clients with a powerful one-two punch on complex regulatory matters, corporate compliance, and government-run and internal investigations.”
Prior to joining the SEC as regional director in 2015, Shipchandler was a partner at the Bracewell law firm in Dallas, where he represented businesses and corporate officials who were the target of government investigations.