© 2013 The Texas Lawbook.
By Mark Curriden
Senior Writer for The Texas Lawbook
(May 31) – Toby M. Galloway, a 12 year veteran of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Fort Worth Regional Office, is joining Kelly Hart as the firm beefs up its white-collar criminal and securities enforcement practice.
His decision to join Fort Worth-based Kelly Hart bucks a decade-long trend of high-profile and experienced securities enforcement lawyers joining Dallas law firms instead of Fort Worth firms, even though the SEC’s regional office is in Fort Worth.
“Kelly Hart is a great firm with some great lawyers, and being based in Fort Worth is personally important to me because I was born and raised here and so was my wife,” says Galloway, whose wife, Kathleen is an investigative staff attorney at the SEC. “And I think it is an advantage for the law firm and the firm’s clients that I will be located here, just down the street from the SEC’s office.”
Galloway says he met and became friends with Kelly Hart litigation partner Lars Berg when Berg was appointed as the receiver in a major SEC case.
“Toby has been a big part of this office for a long time,” says David Woodcock, director of the SEC’s Forth Worth Regional Office. “He’s an excellent lawyer and his departure is definitely a loss.”
Dee Kelly Jr., who is the managing partner at Kelly Hart, says that Galloway’s reputation as a superb trial attorney made him the ideal lawyer to help the firm grow its white-collar and securities enforcement practice.
“Having the SEC office here in Fort Worth is a big deal and having Toby and his experience will help our clients and help us expand our client base,” he says.
A 1994 graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, Galloway joined the SEC in 2001 after practicing seven years at Locke Lord. For the past few years, he has been the SEC’s chief trial counsel for the region, overseeing a team of seven trial lawyers and four paralegals.
“I loved being an enforcement lawyer at the SEC,” he says. “It was the best job I could have hoped for.”
Galloway admits that the SEC’s Fort Worth office, which handles examinations and enforcement matters in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas, experienced some “dark days” during his 12 years at the federal agency.
“When Stanford and then Madoff matters [and the subsequent criticism alleging that the SEC should have caught those scandals sooner] hit the SEC, it became a much less fun place to work,” he says. “There have been highs and lows, but I think the office is now out of the ditch and is doing great work.”
Galloway says that Woodcock and SEC Regional enforcement chief David Peavler have done “a great job” of improving morale in the office and getting the lawyers in the office involved in great cases.
“David is a very thoughtful person,” he says. “He’s very interested in being proactive in identifying issues and predicting risks before they become a major problem.”
Galloway predicts the SEC’s Fort Worth office will become more aggressive in pursuing accounting fraud and insider trading cases. He says that hedge funds are increasingly under the microscope. And he says that the agency’s focus on enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act will continue to generate attention and cases.
“In Texas, I think there will always be an additional focus on oil and gas matters, especially in cases where there’s been an overstatement of proof of reserves and offering fraud cases where an official has misrepresented how investment money would be used,” he says.
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