Timothy Massad

Timothy George Massad (born July 30, 1956) is an American lawyer and government official who served as the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) under President Barack Obama. He had previously been Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability at the United States Department of the Treasury, where he oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) created by the U.S. government in response to the 2008 financial crisis.

Massad earned his undergraduate degree at Harvard University in 1978. After stints working for Ralph Nader and the AFL–CIO, he returned to Harvard to earn a J.D. degree in 1981. He then began a 25-year career as a corporate lawyer at the firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where he became an expert on corporate finance and derivatives.

Massad briefly joined the staff of TARP's Congressional Oversight Panel before moving to the Office of Financial Stability as chief counsel. In September 2010 he was named acting Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability. The U.S. Senate confirmed him to the position in June 2011. In November 2013, President Barack Obama nominated him to be CFTC chairman. The Senate confirmed him in June 2014.

Early life and education Massad was born July 30, 1956, in New Orleans, Louisiana. His parents were the children of Lebanese immigrants. His mother, Delores Jean Razook, was a homemaker, and his father, Alexander Hamilton Massad, was an executive in the oil industry, mostly at Mobil. In Timothy's earlier years the family moved often because of his father's career, but in 1968 they settled in Darien, Connecticut, where the parents remained for 18 years. Massad has a brother and a sister.

Massad graduated from Darien High School in 1974 as a National Merit Scholar and interned with a Congressman. He then enrolled at Harvard University, earning a bachelor's degree magna cum laude in social studies in 1978. During this time he was active in the anti-nuclear power movement, organizing with Donald K. Ross a large protest in Washington, D.C., on May 6, 1979, in the wake of the Three Mile Island accident.

Legal career

Dissatisfied with his employers' grasp of business and economics, Massad enrolled at Harvard Law School in 1981. He graduated in 1984 and began his 25-year career at the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore that same year. co-writing with other Cravath lawyers the ISDA Master Agreement that governs most derivatives contracts between institutions.

Government service

The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 was enacted in October 2008 in response to the 2008 financial crisis. It created the Office of Financial Stability within the Treasury Department to administer the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), a $700-billion bailout fund for the financial industry.

Massad became involved in TARP when he called a friend, Damon Silvers, to congratulate him on being named to the program's Congressional Oversight Panel. During this conversation, Silvers recruited him to join the panel's staff. Massad took a leave of absence from Cravath from December 2008 to February 2009

Later, when Treasury officials were looking for a chief counsel for the Office of Financial Stability, Silvers recommended Massad. In this role he has supervised the gradual wind-down of TARP. That post became vacant on Jan. 3, 2014, when Gary Gensler stepped down. The Senate confirmed him on June 3, 2014. He was sworn in on June 5.

Political activities

During law school Massad worked on Michael Dukakis's successful 1982 campaign for Governor of Massachusetts. During the 1988 presidential election Massad again supported Dukakis, whom he described as his political hero. Massad was a voting delegate at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, where Dukakis was nominated for president, and took a leave of absence from Cravath to serve as Connecticut director of the Dukakis campaign for the general election. Dukakis lost Connecticut, and the election, to George H. W. Bush.

Massad is a longtime donor to the Democratic National Committee He is known at Treasury for running a baking contest among his staff.

Massad has a wife and two children. They live in Washington, D.C.