Morrison & Foerster (MoFo) has recruited John Smith, a former director of the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), for its in Washington, D.C. office.
Smith left OFAC in April and will work as a partner in MoFo’s global risk and crisis management, national security and investigations and white-collar groups. Smith said he considered more than a dozen other firms, but settled on MoFo due to its top-notch national security practice with global sanctions and anti-money laundering expertise, as well as the firm’s deep bench in investigations and enforcement.
“I needed a firm with a global reach to match the global impact of US economic sanctions,” Smith said.
Outside of the nation’s capital, Smith will spend a lot of time working out of MoFo’s offices in Europe and Tokyo, and he said he wanted to make sure that the lawyers in those offices worked in his area of expertise.
Smith said he knew that MoFo was unique in its ability to make a lateral hire from federal government service and treat that person well in terms of their professional and personal acclimation into private practice.
