Profile: Jay Clayton, Trump's Pick for Intelligence Chief, Has Long Legal Resume but Few Intel Credentials
Former SEC chair Jay Clayton, who has reportedly socialized and played golf with President Donald Trump, has questioned the integrity of US elections. Days before his nomination as director of national intelligence, Clayton discussed potential fraud in California's elections, falsely claiming the state's laws left open the 'opportunity for fraud.'
Clayton, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York and former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has a lengthy legal resume in the private and public sectors and a track record of unequivocal support for Trump and his agenda.
Like Bill Pulte, Clayton does not have experience in the intelligence world. He is most recently notable for signing off on the indictment against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Before Trump appointed him to the SEC role, Clayton had a career as a Wall Street attorney that made him a multimillionaire. While a lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell, he represented major financial players including Goldman Sachs during the 2008 recession, according to the New York Times.
In 2017, during Trump's first term, the president nominated Clayton as chair of the SEC. In 2025, shortly after taking office for his second term, Trump tapped Clayton for the US attorney role in Manhattan, taking over from the interim judge who refused to help the Justice Department drop charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams. He was not confirmed by the Senate but approved by the court itself. At the time, the Wall Street Journal noted the move put Clayton, who had largely avoided partisan political drama, in the middle of 'partisan warfare.'
More recently, the New York Times reported that Clayton has been socializing and golfing with Trump and has 'often been absent' from his office.
Clayton could continue Tulsi Gabbard's record of investigating election fraud at Trump's behest. On CNBC on June 8, during a conversation about allegations of fraud in California elections, Clayton said of election integrity: 'We're doing an absolutely terrible job, and the American people are right to question it.' Trump has called the elections 'rigged' while presenting no evidence to support the allegations.
Clayton said California's mail-voting laws, which include sending mail ballots to all voters and a grace period for ballots to arrive after election day, created an 'opportunity for fraud.'
Clayton holds an undergraduate engineering degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a master's degree from King's College, Cambridge. He returned to Penn to earn a law degree in 1993.
This article was amended on June 11, 2026, to clarify that Jay Clayton became US attorney for the Southern District of New York in 2025. An earlier version misstated the timeline.
