SEC Announces New Hires in the Office of Administrative Law Judges

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that two new judges and three new attorneys will join the Office of Administrative Law Judges this summer.

James E. Grimes joined the office as an Administrative Law Judge on June 30.  The office also recently hired attorneys Darien S. Capron, William Weihao Miller, and Jessica Neiterman as law clerks.  Another Administrative Law Judge is expected to join the office in August.  These additions will nearly double the size of the office, which received more than 200 assignments to conduct public hearings and issued 34 Initial Decisions in fiscal 2013.

Mr. Grimes previously spent 13 years at the U.S. Department of Justice where he was a senior litigation counsel in its civil division and a member of the faculty at the Department of Justice National Advocacy Center.  He began his career in the U.S. Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps, where he first served as a trial defense counsel defending service members in courts-martial and later served as an appellate counsel representing the government before military appellate courts.  Mr. Grimes received his B.A. degree, cum laude, in 1992 from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and graduated with honors from The Ohio State University College of Law in 1995.

Ms. Capron, formerly an associate at Covington & Burling LLP, is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, and graduated summa cum laude from Florida State University in 2007.  Mr. Miller, previously a litigation associate with Arnold & Porter LLP, is a 2010 graduate of Columbia University School of Law, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.  He has a degree with distinction from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a B.A. degree, cum laude, from the University of California, San Diego.  Ms. Neiterman, a former litigation associate at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP, graduated with honors from Duke University School of Law in 2009 and received her B.A. degree, magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania in 2006.