SEC Names Securities Lawyer David Woodcock as Director of Enforcement

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Wednesday that securities lawyer David Woodcock will be the regulator’s next director of the Division of Enforcement, effective May 4. Woodcock will fill the role of former director Margaret A. Ryan, who resigned effective immediately on March 16.

Sam Waldon will continue to serve as acting director of the division in the interim.

Woodcock returns to the SEC after more than 10 years, having served as director of the Fort Worth regional office for four years until 2015. During his earlier tenure, Woodcock oversaw investigations in most major areas of the SEC’s enforcement program, served as a member of the Enforcement Advisory Committee and created and served as chair of the SEC’s cross-office and cross-division Financial Reporting and Audit Task Force.

SEC Chairman Paul Atkins praised Woodcock in a statement, saying he is “a foremost expert in all relevant facets of securities law and has deep institutional knowledge.”

Woodcock is a partner in the Dallas and Washington offices of the firm Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher LLP, and chair of the firm’s securities enforcement practice group. As an attorney in private practice, who is also a certified public accountant, he has represented clients in SEC enforcement actions, financial reporting investigations and on disclosure and accounting issues, according to his biography on the law firm’s website. He also “regularly advises clients on corporate securities and governance, the role of the board, shareholder activism and [environmental, social and governance]-related issues, including the energy transition, climate disclosures, enterprise risk management practices and related U.S./European regulations,” the biography states.

Immediately prior to joining Gibson Dunn, Woodcock served as assistant general counsel–corporate at ExxonMobil Corp. After joining the law firm in 2023, he represented his former employer in its 2024 suit, ExxonMobil Corporation v. Arjuna Capital LLC, in which ExxonMobil sued to enable it to exclude from the proxy statement for its 2024 annual meeting a shareholder proposal related to its greenhouse gas emissions and alleged contributions to climate change filed by Arjuna and activist investor Follow This.

Shareholders voted down the proposal and in June 2024, a Texas federal court said Arjuna’s covenant that it would not submit future climate proposals mooted Exxon’s lawsuit to exclude the proposal. The suit was dismissed without prejudice.

Woodcock also serves as an adjunct professor of law at the Texas A&M University School of Law, where he has taught compliance, ethics and securities for more than a decade.

“I am incredibly pleased to have David rejoin the SEC at this critical time, as we continue to focus on the types of misconduct that inflict the greatest harm to investors,” Atkins said in his statement.

The SEC’s Enforcement Division carried out 313 new enforcement actions in fiscal 2025, down 27% from 2024 and the lowest number of enforcements in a decade, according to a report released in January by the Harvard Law School Forum of Corporate Governance. The same report found the division’s total monetary settlements totaled $808 million in 2025, or 45% less than in 2024.

Following Ryan’s resignation, the SEC announcement released a statement saying the former director had “renewed focus on holding individual wrongdoers accountable,” and “redirected the division staff toward the types of misconduct that inflict the greatest harm … and away from approaches that prioritized touting volume over impact.”