Thomas A. Russo

Thomas A. Russo (born November 6, 1943) is an American lawyer, professor, and author.

Early life and education

Russo was born in Staten Island on November 6, 1943. He attended Xavier High School in Manhattan, a private Jesuit preparatory school. Russo pursued a bachelor’s degree in economics at Fordham University where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1965. In 1969, he received an MBA from the Cornell Graduate School of Business, and in that same year his J.D. degree from Cornell Law School.

Career

In 1969, Russo started working as an attorney in the Division of Market Regulation of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In 1971, Russo became an associate at the Wall Street law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. In 1975, Russo was appointed deputy general counsel of the newly created Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and shortly thereafter became the first director of its Division of Trading and Markets.

In 1977, Russo became a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, and subsequently became a member of its Management Committee. He specialized in SEC enforcement, broker-dealer law, and CFTC and derivatives regulation.

In 1992, he left Cadwalader and joined the Investment Banking firm of Lehman Brothers as its Chief Legal Officer and a member of its Executive Committee. Subsequently, he was also named Vice Chairman of the firm. He left Lehman Brothers in 2009, and in 2010 joined American International Group, Inc. (AIG) as Executive Vice President and General Counsel with responsibility for legal, compliance, regulatory, and government affairs until his retirement in 2016. At AIG he was a member of its Executive Committee.

Russo also served as an advisor to the 1987 Brady Commission and was an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Graduate Business School.

Russo has authored several books and over 70 articles on topics in the commodities, securities and corporate legal fields relating to financial market regulation.