J.W. Verret

Associate Professor of Law

BS, Louisiana State University; MA, Harvard Kennedy School of Government; JD, Harvard Law School

Professional Information

Contact Information

  • Email: Send an email
  • Phone: 703-993-8038
  • Office: Room 419, Hazel Hall, Arlington
  • Address:
    Antonin Scalia Law School
    George Mason University
    3301 Fairfax Dr.
    Arlington, VA 22201
  • Google Scholar: Profile Page

Biographical Sketch

Associate Professor J.W. Verret, JD, CPA/CFF, CFE, CVA, joined the law faculty in 2008 and teaches Banking, Securities and Corporation Law as well as Forensic Accounting and Finance for Lawyers.

He has also been a Visiting Professor at Stanford Law School.

His work teaching CLEs on law and forensic accounting at law firms around the country was profiled by Above the Law at this link: https://abovethelaw.com/2019/02/educating-associates-in-finance-and-accounting-and-offering-expert-witnesses-too.

He frequently serves as an expert witness in securities, corporate and commercial litigation and arbitration proceedings on securities, M&A and forensic accounting matters.

A few representative engagements include New Jersey v. Sprint, 758 F.Supp.2d 1186 (2010) and Landsdowne v. OpenBand, 713 F.3d 187 (2013), but most arbitration expert matters are subject to NDAs.

These expert matters are handled via an expert witness firm Professor Verret founded, known as Veritas, Veritas Analytics, or Veritas Forensics.

Prof. Verret was recently deemed a forensic accounting expert in a $300 million dollar federal money laundering case by Judge Moss in U.S. v. Sterlingov.

He has served on the Investor Advisory Committee of the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he advised the Chairman of the SEC on legal and policy reform.  He is currently a member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s FASAC advisory committee on the development of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

He is faculty liaison to the American College of Business Court Judges.

He has served as Independent Chairman of the Board of Directors of Egan-Jones Ratings, one of the eight domestic credit rating firms licensed by the SEC to provide credit ratings on the debt of public companies and provides recommendations on shareholder proxy votes.

He previously clerked on the Delaware Court of Chancery.  He received his JD from Harvard Law School, a Masters in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a BS in Financial Accounting from LSU.

His work has appeared in venues from the Stanford Law Review and The Journal of Law and Economics to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.  He has appeared on most major television networks on financial regulatory issues and has testified before the U.S. House and Senate over a dozen times.

He has previously served as Senior Counsel and Chief Economist for the U.S. House Financial Services Committee, where he led oversight of federal anti-money laundering law and oversight of the Treasury Department’s (particularly FinCen’s) evolving laws impacting crypto assets, and where he led an investigation into a leak of confidential information by the Federal Reserve that led to the resignation of the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.

He is a licensed forensic accountant and holds the CPA, CFF (Certified in Financial Forensics), CFE (Certified Fraud Examiner), and CVA (Certified Valuation Analyst) licenses.

He serves on the board of directors of the Zcash Foundation, which funds research into cryptocurrency privacy and leading cryptography innovations in the zero-knowledge proof school of cryptography mathematics utilized in crypto privacy tools.

He holds a certificate in the economics of blockchain from the Wharton Business School.