Alabama Securities Commission Director Amanda Senn on Monday named JonMarc P. Buffa, an 18-year veteran of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the agency’s new General Counsel.

Buffa has worked alongside the Alabama Securities Commission before. He was lead counsel in CFTC v. Metals.com, the 2020 precious metals case the CFTC filed jointly with 30 state securities regulators, Alabama among them. The commission still calls it the largest joint filing between the CFTC and the states in history.

He was also lead counsel in CFTC v. WG Trading, the case against two New York money managers who told pension funds and universities their money was in a conservative index arbitrage strategy and spent it on horse farms, houses and rare collectibles.

Senn also held the role under longtime Director Joe Borg from December 2014 until the commission made her Director in May 2023.

She now co-chairs the enforcement section of the North American Securities Administrators Association, the state regulators’ group that put the Metals.com case together with the CFTC.

Buffa joined the CFTC in 2008 and led its Office of Cooperative Enforcement. He served as Senior Counsel to Commissioner Summer Mersinger, Counsel to Enforcement Directors Ian McGinley and Brian Young, and Special Counsel and Policy Advisor to Commissioner Scott O’Malia. He worked on the Dodd-Frank rulemakings and sat on the agency’s Technology Advisory Committee and its Energy and Environmental Markets Advisory Committee. For 15 years he has taught financial markets regulation, cryptocurrency and fintech as an adjunct at Georgetown University Law Center.

He holds a law degree from Notre Dame and a finance and marketing degree, cum laude, from Boston College’s Carroll School of Management.

“Throughout his career, JonMarc Buffa has played a significant role in combating financial fraud while working collaboratively with industry to promote transparency and integrity in our nation’s capital and derivatives markets,” Senn said.

“His deep enforcement experience, strategic insight, and commitment to public service will further strengthen the Alabama Securities Commission’s ability to safeguard Alabamians from financial fraud and hold those who violate the law accountable to the fullest extent permitted by law. We are pleased to welcome JonMarc and his family to Alabama and look forward to his leadership as our new General Counsel.”

Grayson Everett is the editor in chief of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on X @Grayson270.