Matthew_Solomon

Matthew Solomon

Partner, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton

Matt Solomon joined the firm as a partner after serving for 15 years as a white-collar prosecutor and unit chief with the U.S. Department of Justice and as a senior enforcement official with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission—most recently as the SEC’s Chief Litigation Counsel.

At Cleary, Matt represents global financial institutions, public and private companies (foreign and domestic), private equity firms, asset managers, and individual corporate executives and employees on a broad range of issues and disputes spanning from regulatory compliance and remediation advice to advocacy and litigation against the government and private parties. Matt leverages his high-level government experience as both a former federal prosecutor and supervisor and SEC enforcement official to vigorously represent his clients’ interests before a broad range of criminal and regulatory authorities, including the SEC, DOJ, CFTC, FINRA, and State Attorneys General.

Matt has tried more than 20 cases to verdict, including as lead counsel in complex, white-collar jury trials in the District of Columbia, the Northern District of California, the Eastern District of Kentucky, and the District of Puerto Rico. He has also briefed and argued cases in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the First Circuit, and the Seventh Circuit.

Prior to joining Cleary, Matt served as the SEC’s Deputy Chief Litigation Counsel in 2012 before being promoted to Chief Litigation Counsel in 2013. As the agency’s top litigator, Matt led the SEC’s 150-attorney national trial unit and supervised the SEC’s litigated cases in federal court and administrative proceedings. Matt regularly interacted with the SEC enforcement staff nationwide in relation to complex issues arising in investigations and counseled the directors of the SEC’s Enforcement Division as well as its specialized divisions, including the Divisions of Corporation Finance and Trading and Markets, on issues relating to litigation strategy and risk.

Before joining the SEC, Matt served in prominent positions over nearly a decade with the DOJ, including as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, as the Chief of the Fraud Unit for the 350-lawyer U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, and as an Honors Program trial attorney in the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section. He also spent nearly two years (on detail from the DOJ) serving as Counsel to the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee where he worked on criminal law and national securities issues.

Appearances