Trump picks Brian Johnson, former CFPB No. 2, to lead bureau

Samuel Corum/Bloomberg

• Key insight: If he's confirmed by the Senate, Johnson will replace Russell Vought, the CFPB's controversial acting director, whose tenure was defined by mass staff cuts and a retreat from rigorous bank supervision. 
• What's at stake: The move signals an end to the administration's year-long reliance on Vought as acting director and tactical maneuvers used to skirt the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.
• Forward look: CFPB Chief Legal Officer Mark Paoletta is slated to serve as acting director until Johnson clears the Senate confirmation process. 

President Trump has named Brian Johnson, a former deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the first Trump administration, to be the bureau's next permanent director, replacing acting Director Russell Vought, whose term ends Aug. 1.

On Wednesday, the White House sent Johnson's nomination to the Senate for confirmation. Under federal law, Vought cannot continue to serve in an acting capacity now that Trump has made a nomination, which will likely trigger more short-term shuffling.

Johnson, who previously served as deputy CFPB director under former Director Kathy Kraninger, is a credit card compliance officer at Capital One Financial as well as a managing director at Patomak Partners, a Washington-based regulatory firm, according to his LinkedIn profile. At Patomak, he previously worked for Paul Atkins, the current chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

Before joining the CFPB in the first Trump administration, Johnson was a partner at the law firm Alston & Bird and had served as chief counsel for the House Committee on Financial Services. He spent more than 12 years on Capitol Hill working on issues related to the operations of banks and their regulators, including the CFPB.

Over the past year, the Trump administration tried to keep Vought in control of the CFPB, where he has radically changed the agency's direction.

On Wednesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, assailed both Vought and Johnson.

"Starting in August, Russ Vought can no longer legally serve as Donald Trump's hatchet man at the CFPB," Warren said in a press release. "So here comes the next hatchet man to try to finish the job and gut an agency that has returned more than $21 billion to cheated consumers."

Warren is credited with conceiving of the CFPB when she was a Harvard Law professor, and she helped build the agency after being appointed as a special adviser to the Treasury Secretary by President Obama. Political opposition prevented her from being confirmed as its first director.

Vought and the CFPB's union are locked in a legal battle over his efforts to drastically cut the bureau's staff. Vought's legal standing also has been challenged in court by the National Treasury Employees Union, which has claimed the Trump administration lacked the authority to appoint Vought to head the CFPB. Vought also serves concurrently as the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

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In its effort to keep Vought in the role, last November the Trump administration named Stuart Levenbach, an OMB employee and a virtual unknown in consumer finance, to serve as the CFPB's permanent director. A CFPB spokesperson reportedly admitted that the nomination was a tactical maneuver to extend Vought's tenure at the CFPB and work around the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. Under that law, a top deputy can serve as an acting agency head until a permanent director is confirmed by the Senate. The move gave Vought another 210 days to lead the CFPB on an acting basis. The Republican-led Senate never acted on Levenbach's nomination.

Meanwhile, Mark Paoletta, the CFPB's chief legal officer, has been selected to succeed Vought as the CFPB's acting director until Johnson is confirmed. Paoletta also serves as general counsel at the Office of Management and Budget, where Vought is director.

Vought wasn't the administration's first choice to head the bureau. In February 2025, the Trump administration put forward Jonathan McKernan, who had served on the board of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., to be the CFPB's permanent director.

But the Trump administration soon changed course, naming McKernan to a job as under secretary for domestic finance at the Treasury Department, serving under Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

In early February 2025, Trump tapped Bessent to lead the CFPB on an acting basis, but that choice lasted only five days, as Trump soon picked Vought as acting director.

 The CFPB director serves a term of up to five years. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that the agency's director can be fired at will by the president.