The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is one of the most important Wall Street regulators. The CFTC regulates a derivatives market that is estimated at $240 trillion (in notional value, as measured by the OCC) in 2013. One of the agency’s Commissioner’s, the Republican Scott O'Malia, has just announced that he’s leaving…to join the very company who is suing them.

We’ve previously compared Commissioner O’Malia to Aquaman, if Aquaman were evil. It turns out that while we thought O'Malia was a public servant with bad ideologies, it turns out that actually a better comparison now would be the double-agent Emperor Palpatine, a Sith Lord pretending to be a public servant.

The company O'Malia will now head (as their CEO) is called the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA). ISDA is suing the CFTC over one of their most important pieces of regulation, called “Cross-Border.” The Cross-Border regulations help to determine when a particular trade must obey United States regulations. This is important to get right, because if U.S. financial firms, or foreign firms that operate here, can simply shift trades overseas to dodge regulations, much of the CFTC’s hard work could be for naught.

It was bad enough when another CFTC Commissioner, (ostensible) Democrat Mark Wetjen invited ISDA onto an advisory committee, to give the CFTC advice (…on how to get sued better?). But now? One of the former heads of the CFTC will be able to bring all the knowledge he has of the inner workings of the CFTC to bear at the company leading this assault against them. One must question how long O'Malia has been planning his departure.

Having spent so many years heading the agency, it’s absolutely certain that O’Malia has important inside information about the CFTC’s legal concerns in the case. This latest move begs new legislation—we could nickname it the “O’Malia rule”—demanding a substantial cooling off period where the former heads of regulators cannot join firms currently suing that regulator.

O’Malia was long known as a captured industry ally, but him leaving to head a company actively suing his old agency is in particularly bad taste even for Washington, where peddling prior influence and access to decision-makers is commonplace.