Paul Grewal

Paul Singh Grewal is an American attorney working as chief legal officer at Coinbase. Previously, Grewal was vice president and deputy general counsel at Facebook, and is also a former U.S. magistrate judge for the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

Education Grewal earned a Bachelor of Science degree civil and environmental engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993, where he was elected to Tau Beta Pi and Sigma Xi. Grewal then earned a J.D. degree from the University of Chicago in 1996.

Career Upon graduation from law school, Grewal served as a judicial law clerk for Sam H. Bell of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.

Grewal is the former president of the National South Asian Bar Association. Grewal was approved to join the Board of Directors for Zapproved, an electronic discovery software provider, in July 2021.

Magistrate judge On December 1, 2010, Grewal was sworn in as a U.S. magistrate judge for the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. At that time, he was only the second sitting South Asian federal magistrate judge in the United States. Grewal was also appointed by Chief Justice John Roberts to the Federal Judicial Center’s Magistrate Judge Education Committee and served as a co-chair of the Federal Circuit Bar Association’s Judges Committee. Grewal retired from the bench on June 3, 2016. He joined Facebook in June 2016.

Coinbase On July 9, 2020, it was announced that Grewal would replace Brian Brooks as chief legal officer at Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange. On June 14, 2022, Coinbase announced that it would layoff 18% of its workforce. Grewal defended the layoffs, arguing that it needed to be done to "ensure we stay healthy during this economic downturn." According to the 2022 Proxy Statement, Grewal beneficially owns 767,759 Class A Common Stock.