Jess Velona

  • Lecturer in Law

Jess Velona is a senior attorney in the enforcement division of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. For a decade, he was a commercial litigator at Schulte Roth & Zabel and at Paul Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. He also worked extensively on pro bono matters, including a federal class action to reform New York City's child welfare system.

Velona was a law clerk to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, then a judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, prior to Ginsburg becoming a Supreme Court justice.

Velona is the co-author of “Clearing Broker Liability and Responsibilities” in Broker-Dealer Regulation, Practising Law Institute, 2004, and the author or co-author of articles on the workings of the U.S. Courts of Appeals.

He received his J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1988, where he was a James Kent Scholar, an articles and book reviews editor of the Columbia Law Review, and a Tony Patino Fellow. He graduated from Harvard College in 1983, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In 2016, he received a master's degree in history from New York University.