NY DFS Taps Ex-CFPB Official For Top Financial Enforcement Role

New York’s financial services regulator said Thursday that it has hired a new top consumer protection cop, bringing aboard a veteran enforcement official recently departed from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In a social media post, the New York State Department of Financial Services announced Gabriel O’Malley will head up its Consumer Protection and Financial Enforcement Division, an arm that handles investigations, enforcement and consumer compliance exams. His official start date is Thursday.

A spokesperson for NYDFS declined to provide further comment.

O’Malley left the CFPB at the end of February after more than a decade in enforcement at the federal consumer watchdog, where he most recently served as its deputy enforcement director for policy and strategy.

His move comes as part of a broader exodus from the CFPB, which has shed numerous staffers since the Trump administration brought the agency to a standstill in early February and began pushing for massive reductions in its workforce.

Roughly 170 CFPB probationary and term employees were fired last month — about 10% of its staff as of last year — while dozens more have taken the administration’s deferred resignation offer, retired or left in anticipation of sharp potential cuts.

With similar stories playing out at other federal agencies, the government talent pool is ripe for recruiting. NYDFS Superintendent Adrienne Harris is one of those seizing the opportunity, even making a jobs pitch at a Tuesday appearance in Washington, D.C.

O’Malley’s hiring could signal that NYDFS will be looking to fill any perceived gaps in financial industry oversight that emerge from the Trump administration’s bid to curtail and shrink the CFPB.

The agency division that O’Malley will lead was in fact created amid previous concerns about CFPB retrenchment that arose during the first Trump administration, when a number of states stood up their own “mini-CFPBs” to bulk up their consumer protection efforts.

The division, known as CPFED for short, polices financial fraud and other violations of New York’s financial services laws. It also carries out the agency’s consumer compliance, fair lending and community lending exams, and it fields complaints about regulated firms.

O’Malley was an associate at Ropes & Gray LLP early in his career before entering the public sector. He was a special assistant district attorney in the Boston area and later spent five years as an assistant attorney general in consumer protection at the Massachusetts Attorney General‘s Office, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He joined the CFPB in 2013, starting out as an enforcement attorney and then becoming a senior litigation counsel. He later served as assistant deputy enforcement director for litigation and spent the past seven years as deputy enforcement director for policy and strategy.

O’Malley marked his exit from the CFPB in a March 1 LinkedIn post that described the agency’s enforcement staff as facing “silence and uncertainty” after they and other CFPB employees were put on administrative leave last month.

“Come what may, given their intelligence, grit, hard work, and drive to help those most in need, I have no doubt that each member of Enforcement will go on protecting folks throughout their career,” he wrote. “I will be rooting hard for them — and for the Bureau.”

O’Malley holds a law degree from Columbia Law School and a bachelor’s degree from Haverford College.