Gareth Rhodes

Gareth Rhodes is an attorney and advisor with expertise in financial services, who has served in senior legal and operational positions in government and the private sector. 

As an attorney, Gareth provides legal counsel to startups, venture capital funds, and established financial institutions, as well as serving as counsel at a boutique law firm specializing in white-collar defense, securities enforcement, and regulatory matters. As an advisor, Gareth offers strategic guidance and management capabilities to early stage and established entities in the financial services sector, including alternative investment, venture capital, and proprietary trading firms.

Gareth is also an adjunct professor at The City College of New York (CUNY). He serves on the Board of Directors of Bastion, a stablecoin issuance platform for institutions, as well as on the Board of Directors of Civic Hall & NY Tech Alliance.

Gareth previously served as Deputy Superintendent & Special Counsel at the New York State Dept. of Financial Services (NYDFS), the state’s primary financial services regulator, where he was as a senior advisor to the Superintendent and member of department’s executive leadership team, helping manage an agency of 1,500 employees responsible for regulating 1,800 insurance companies and 1,400 banking institutions with combined assets of $8.4 trillion. At NYDFS, Gareth managed priority initiatives and numerous matters involving each of the department’s divisions, including banking, capital markets, research & innovation, insurance, consumer protection, and cybersecurity.

Gareth has also worked in-house as an attorney managing regulatory matters for a Series D consumer credit company as well as for a startup that enables financial service providers to integrate smarter data into their lending models. In these roles, Gareth provided legal expertise and strategic advice on key regulatory matters, including issues regarding data access and privacy, algorithmic decision making/machine learning, fair lending/ECOA, cybersecurity, bank partnership structure, debt collection, true lender/valid-when-made, and financial inclusion. He also managed numerous engagements with federal regulators (FRB, OCC, FDIC, CFPB, NCUA), the NEC, as well as with members of Congress and committee staff.

In addition to his work in financial services, Gareth has served in several senior roles across New York state government where he has directly managed major initiatives involving healthcare, public transit, government operations, media communications, public policy, and crisis response. In early 2020, Gareth served as a special advisor to the Governor of New York as part of a small team assigned to manage the state’s COVID response operations, where he oversaw the building of a COVID testing network, managed hospital capacity issues, directed vaccination operations, and coordinated between state agencies and with neighboring state governments, federal agencies, and the White House. Previously, Gareth served as Deputy Inspector General and Counsel at the MTA Inspector General’s office and in senior positions in the New York Governor’s Communications office. Prior, he worked at a boutique law firm specializing in high stakes criminal investigations and complex corporate litigation matters. 

Gareth holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. in Economics & Political Science from The City College of New York. He is a recipient of the Harry S. Truman scholarship.