Gurbir Grewal wants to uncover and prosecute Wall Street misconduct

Starting in July, Gurbir S. Grewal will take over as the Director of Enforcement of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Leading a staff of 1,500, his role will be to “uncover and prosecute misconduct and protect investors,” Grewal said in a statement.  

Several consumer groups and critics of lawyers moving between jobs in government, law firms and the financial industry, sought a director without Wall Street ties. While Grewal has spent much of his career in public office, he counselled private clients on securities, antitrust and foreign corrupt practices matters, according to his biography on the site of the National Association of Attorneys General.

He counselled businesses while working at law firm Howrey LLP, from 1999 to 2004 and from 2008 to 2010. Howrey, which was based in Washington DC, went bankrupt in 2011, one of several law firms put out of business by the 2008-2009 financial crisis.

Grewal, 48-years-old, is leaving his post as the Attorney General of New Jersey, which he has held since January 2018. He headed the state’s Department of Law & Public Safety which employs more than 3,700 police officers, 750 lawyers, and thousands of additional public servants, including investigators, regulators, and administrative staff.  

"The American Dream is alive and well in New Jersey," Grewal said in a statement, after his nomination for attorney general was announced.

He keeps a beard and wears a turban, in accordance with Sikh religious traditions. “I wanted to…show people that while I and others like me may look different and worship differently, we, too, are committed to this country…as someone who has experienced hate and intolerance firsthand throughout my life, I wanted to work to ensure that we all live in a fair and just society."

In 2018, on a New Jersey radio station, Grewal was referred to as the “Turban Man” by hosts of the popular “Dennis & Judi Show", saying they could not remember his name.

“I'm the 61st Attorney General of NJ. I’m a Sikh American. I have 3 daughters. And yesterday, I told them to turn off the radio," Grewal tweeted following the broadcast.

The management of the station suspended the hosts after criticism of their action by the state Governor, other politicians, public figures and the media.   

"This is not the first indignity I've faced and it probably won't be the last," Grewal tweeted. He faces racist remarks in supermarkets, stadiums, shopping malls and on the streets.

"I have been called a towelhead, a raghead, a terrorist. On the day I was nominated to become the 61st attorney general (of New Jersey), one commenter asked where I had parked my elephant," he said, speaking at a meeting of the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies in 2018.  

“I’ve always felt the eyes of others on me.… I’ve had children ask me if I am Osama bin Laden, while their parents stood by and said nothing,” Grewal added. He has been asked numerous times to step aside for further security clearance at airports and corporate office campuses. And, he relayed, “I have been told to go home so many countless times, and in such impolite terms, I can hardly remember where home is. And they did not mean to go back to Glen Rock, New Jersey.” He has also received death threats, so often that it has “become a fact of life for me.”

Sometimes, he endured the racism alone; at other times his daughters, who were with him, watched.

In this video, Gurbir Grewal speaks of the racism he has faced.

Prior to becoming Attorney General, Grewal served as Bergen County prosecutor, the chief law enforcement officer of the most populous county in New Jersey and home to nearly 1 million residents living in 70 municipalities. A Democrat, he was appointed to the post by Republican governor Chris Christie in 2016.

From 2010 to 2016, Grewal worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the district of New Jersey. He led the successful prosecution in United States v. Drinkman, in which the conspirators participated in a worldwide scheme that targeted major corporate networks and stole more than 160 million credit card numbers, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. Grewal was also the lead prosecutor in United States v. Weinstein, et al., a $200 million Ponzi scheme in which the lead defendant was sentenced to 24 years in prison.

From 2004 to 2007, Grewal served in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. He investigated and prosecuted a wide range of narcotics offenses, white collar crimes, and terrorism cases. He also prosecuted 12 men in the U.S. charged with providing material support to the Tamil Tigers terrorist organization, which was then operating in Sri Lanka.

Grewal graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in foreign service from Georgetown University in 1995.  He obtained his law degree from the College of William & Mary in 1999.

Born to Indian immigrant parents in Jersey City, Grewal was raised in the Hudson and Bergen counties of New Jersey state. 

He was a lawyer in private practice at the time of the September 2001 terrorist attacks in America. Following the attacks, he was constantly harassed by a man who would wait outside the law office and shout “I’ve found him. I’ve found bin Laden!” Grewal told The New York Times. Enraged, embarrassed and tired of the taunting, he said he then made it his goal to get into the U.S. attorney’s office, just so he could stand up in court “…looking the way I do and say ‘I represent the United States.’ ”

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