Claudius Modesti

Practice Areas

Claudius offers extensive enforcement experience across a broad range of capital market regulatory and corporate governance matters, including representing corporations, accounting and other professional services firms and financial firms before the DOJ, SEC, PCAOB and other regulators. He also conducts internal investigations on behalf of board of directors, audit committees and senior management. Claudius’s practice builds on 25 years of government and regulatory service, including as a DOJ prosecutor, an SEC enforcement attorney and, most recently, as the PCAOB’s first enforcement director. As PCAOB enforcement director, he led investigations of U.S.- and foreign-based accounting firms, many of which involved parallel SEC investigations. He also played a key role in the PCAOB’s collaboration with its foreign audit regulator counterparts.

Career

Director, Public Company Accounting Oversight Board Division of Enforcement and Investigations; Assistant United States Attorney, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Virginia; Trial Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Division, Fraud Section; Attorney, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Division of Enforcement; Law Clerk, Honorable J. Frederick Motz, U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland

Professional Memberships

Co-Chair, ABA Accountants’ Liability Subcommittee, Professional Services Liability Litigation Committee; SEC Historical Society, Board of Advisors

Personal

J.D., Georgetown University Law Center, magna cum laude

B.S., Georgetown University