F. John Podvin, Jr.

Banking, Lending & Financial Institutions

PHONE: 214.377.0147
EMAIL: jpodvin@os.law

John Podvin is a partner in the firm with over 30 years of regulatory agency, law firm, and corporate experience. He is based in Dallas, Texas, where he works nationally with the firm’s clients.

His practice areas include banking and financial services, corporate governance, financial crisis advisory and litigation, financial regulatory, government relations strategy, regulatory enforcement actions and investigations, and mergers and acquisitions. As outside counsel, Mr. Podvin works closely with the firm’s banking and financial services clients in combating money laundering, cyber security and data breach issues, and developing new products and services, including electronic banking and internet services.

Mr. Podvin advises corporate boards, board committees, management teams and individuals on federal and state banking laws. He has served his clients as a primary liaison to federal and state bank regulators. Mr. Podvin is part of the firm’s nationally recognized team of banking and financial institutions lawyers who provide comprehensive legal services to financial institutions.

Mr. Podvin represented a former Senior Bank Secrecy Act Officer at a bank in a criminal investigation brought by the U.S. Department of Justice in the Southern District of New York and in the concurrent civil investigations brought by the OCC and the Federal Reserve Board as well as in the subsequent civil investigation brought by FinCEN. He has also represented both individuals and banks in investigations brought by the FBI, the U.S. Secret Service, the FDIC Inspector General’s Office, the FDIC, the OCC and the Texas Department of Banking.

Previously, Mr. Podvin was in-house with an NYSE-listed parent company to a $16B bank. There, he advised the board and management on legal compliance issues, anti-money laundering, fair lending practices, affiliate transactions, ethics, privacy, insider lending, data security, and legal lending limits. Serving as Deputy General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, Mr. Podvin was responsible for the development of enterprise-wide policies. He supervised and managed investigations triggered by consumer complaints and calls to the ethics hotline as required by Sarbanes-Oxley. He also served as a member of the public company’s disclosure committee.

Mr. Podvin was elected Chair of the Texas Business Law Foundation for a two-year term from 2021-2022.

In 2018, he was elected Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of the North Texas Chapter of the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS). ACAMS is the largest international membership organization dedicated to enhancing the knowledge, skills and expertise of AML/CTF and financial crime detection and prevention professionals.

He has been named to the annual list of The Best Lawyers in America© every year since 2014 and Best Lawyers® recognized Mr. Podvin as a 2014, 2019, 2023, and 2025 “Lawyer of the Year” for his practice in Financial Services Regulation Law in Dallas, Texas. Best Lawyers is based on an exhaustive peer-review survey and is regarded as a definitive guide to legal excellence.

Mr. Podvin was honored with a listing in Who’s Who Legal: Banking 2022 in the category of Banking – Regulatory. Who’s Who Legal (WWL) is one of the world’s leading directories of legal practitioners and WWL: Banking provides an in-depth guide to the leading banking lawyers around the world.

Mr. Podvin was named to Who’s Who Legal (WWL) Thought Leaders 2023 in two categories, GBRR (Global Banking Regulation Review) and USA-Banking-Regulatory. He was also named to WWL’s Global Leader 2023 list in the area of Banking-Regulatory. These awards recognize some of the foremost banking regulatory lawyers in the U.S. and internationally.

Mr. Podvin has an AV^® Preeminent™ Peer Review Rating with Martindale-Hubbell®, the highest rating in legal ability and ethical standards.

He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School and has a Bachelor of Arts, Economics from Georgetown University.

Speeches and Publications

• January, 2023: quoted in ACAMS moneylaundering.com, the top source for news on financial crime, sanctions and compliance-related issues. The article, “Dozens of Whistleblowers Have Contacted FinCEN Since December,” describes how more than 50 people have secretly flagged anti-money laundering deficiencies and sanctions evasion to U.S. officials in the month since Congress bolstered a fledgling, federal whistleblower program.
  

• Panelist: “Individual Liability for Corporate AML Deficiencies,” ACAMS US Capital Chapter meeting with Caleb Hayes-Deats, Partner, MoloLamken LLP of Washington, D.C. January 19, 2023.

• Q&A session on June 7, 2021 with the staff of the Director of National Security Policy with the US House of Representatives Financial Services Committee. The Director invited Mr. Podvin to answer some questions from her staff on the topic of ransomware and insurance coverage after she attended an InfraGard webinar where Mr. Podvin had been on a panel discussing cybercrime risks to the Financial Services Industry.

• Panelist: Financial Services Sector virtual breakout panel discussion looking at the future of cryptocurrency and associated risks, regulatory issues from recent advanced persistent threat (APT) events, and the shifting of attack channels. Infragard, June 4, 2021. Infragard (https://www.infragard.org/) is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and members of the private sector for the protection of U.S. Critical Infrastructure.

• Panelist, “Culture of Compliance and Individual Liability” – Discussion topics range from compliance officer’s liability to providing the information and metrics your senior management needs to ensure risks are managed effectively plus the role of the Board of Directors in Program approval, 16th Annual Puerto Rican Symposium of Anti-Money Laundering, February 21, 2019.

• Moderator, “Banking Cannabis after rescinding the Cole Memo. What are the leading practices institutions are using to evaluate the risk?” 16th Annual Puerto Rican Symposium of Anti-Money Laundering, February 21, 2019.

• Panelist, “Let’s Make a Deal! M&A Compliance,” American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference, Nashville, TN, June 25-26, 2018.

• Quoted in “BSA, AML, and Your Credit Union: The New Perils,” by Robert McGarvey, August 27, 2018.

• Quoted in “Before Amazon checks out banking, a reality check,” by Patrick Sanders in BAI (Bank Administration Institute), April 4, 2018.

• “Observations on Examinations, Supervision and Enforcement,” Co-Presenter, Independent Bankers of Colorado (IBC) Convention and Trade Show, Vail, Colorado, September, 2017.

• AML/BSA Mile High Summit, Co-Host, and Presenter “Individual Liability: A Brave New World”, Denver, CO, August 2016.

• “Financial Industry Collaboration with Law Enforcement”, Homeland Security Investigations – Cornerstone Outreach, Hurst, TX, May 2016.

• “Managing Personal & Corporate Liability”, Moderator, 2016 Puerto Rican Symposium of Anti-Money Laundering, San Juan, PR, February 2016.

• “FinCEN Developments,” National Armored Car Association Conference, Aurora, CO, October 2015.

• “E-SIGN Compliance Throughout the Account Life Cycle,” Panelist, American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference, Washington, DC, June 2015.

• “Super-sizing AML Efforts at Small and Mid-sized Institutions,” Moderator, ACAMS money-laundering.com 20th Annual International AML & Financial Crime Conference, Hollywood, Florida, March 2015.

• “Responding to a Data Breach,” panelist, American Bankers Association Annual Convention, Dallas, Texas, October 2014.