Randy Quarles, third from the right, poses with John Snow and other members of Snow's senior staff at the Treasury Department Monday on Aug. 8, 2005. | AP Photo Trump expected to pick Treasury veteran as top bank cop

President Donald Trump is expected to nominate former Treasury undersecretary Randy Quarles as the Federal Reserve’s top bank regulator, a person close to the decision said.

The selection would send a clear signal that the administration is looking to take a pragmatic approach to paring back bank regulation, rather than choosing an ideologue who would seek to eviscerate the rules enacted since the financial crisis.


Quarles still needs to meet with the president, which will happen in the coming days, but he is likely to get the nod for the post, the most important bank regulatory position in government, barring unexpected developments.

Senate Republicans have been pressing the administration to pick up the pace when it comes to nominating bank regulators. The Banking Committee at one point had anticipated having a confirmation hearing for a nominee for the Fed regulatory spot in the first three months of the year.

Quarles, a veteran of the George W. Bush administration, is a managing partner at equity investment firm The Cynosure Group. A graduate of Yale Law School, he served as Treasury undersecretary for domestic finance from 2005 to 2006, and as assistant Treasury secretary for international affairs for three years before that.

The slot for which Quarles is the likely pick, Fed vice chairman of supervision, has never been formally filled since it was created out of the landmark 2010 Dodd-Frank financial-regulation law.

Daniel Tarullo, who stepped down from the Fed board this month, served as the de facto quarterback in rolling out aggressive layers of complex regulations in the wake of the 2008 crisis.

Trump’s selection is likely to be given the opposite task — deciding which regulations need to be scrapped, though he will still have to work with the rest of the Fed board. As a member of the Fed board, Quarles would also have a direct hand in setting monetary policy.

An executive at a large bank described Quarles as practical and as someone who would be able to view post-crisis financial regulation with fresh eyes.

“If you were looking for someone who was familiar with the industry with the prior rules, uninvolved with Dodd-Frank, he probably fits that bill better than anyone,” the bank executive said. “He wasn’t one of the people who wrote it, and he wasn’t one of the people who fought it."

Zachary Warmbrodt contributed to this report.