Kevin Warsh

Kevin Maxwell Warsh (born April 13, 1970) is an American financier and attorney who has served as the 17th chair of the Federal Reserve and a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors since 2026. Warsh served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 2006 to 2011. Warsh graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor's degree in public policy in 1992 and from Harvard Law School with a Juris Doctor in 1995. He joined Morgan Stanley as an associate specializing in mergers and acquisitions in 1996. Warsh later served as the firm's vice president and executive director of investment banking within its mergers and acquisitions division. In 2002, President George W. Bush named Warsh as a special assistant to the president for economic policy and the executive secretary of the National Economic Council. Warsh's work involved handling the aftermath of multiple significant accounting scandals, including representing the Bush administration in discussions over the Sarbanes–Oxley Act. In January 2006, Bush nominated Warsh to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. He served as a lieutenant to the board's chairman, Ben Bernanke, particularly in responding to the 2008 financial crisis. As the Federal Reserve's central liaison to financial markets, Warsh was involved in the sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, and the bailout of American International Group. After opposing a plan to purchase US$600 billion in Treasury securities, a move favored by Bernanke, Warsh resigned from the Board of Governors in March 2011. After his resignation, he became a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and served on several boards of directors. In January 2026, President Donald Trump named Warsh as his nominee to serve as the chair of the Federal Reserve, succeeding Jerome Powell. Amid a federal investigation into Powell, North Carolina senator Thom Tillis blocked Warsh's nomination from advancing through the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. Warsh appeared before the committee in April, in which he was questioned over the independence of the Federal Reserve. The Senate voted to confirm Warsh as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and as the chair of the Federal Reserve the following month. The vote to confirm Warsh as chair was the narrowest for the position in U . history.