George W. Madison
General Counsel
U.S. Department of the Treasury
As General Counsel, Mr. Madison serves as the chief law officer of the Department and a senior policy advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury. He heads the Department’s Legal Division consisting of approximately 2,000 lawyers within the Department’s headquarters, the Internal Revenue Service, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, the Bureau of Public Debt, the Financial Management Service, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the U.S. Mint and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
Before joining the Department, Mr. Madison served as the Executive Vice President and General Counsel of TIAA-CREF and as a member of its executive management team. Mr. Madison joined the company in 2003 after six and a half years as executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary at Comerica Incorporated, where he also served as a member of Comerica’s management policy committee and management council.
Previously, Mr. Madison was a partner in the law firm of Mayer, Brown & Platt in New York (currently known as Mayer, Brown), practicing banking and structured finance law on behalf of foreign and domestic money center banks.
Before joining Mayer, Brown & Platt in 1987, Mr. Madison was an associate with the law firm of Shearman & Sterling in New York. He also served as law clerk to the Honorable Nathaniel R. Jones at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati.
Mr. Madison is a member of the American Bar Association, the American Law Institute, the American Judicature Society and the Association of Corporate Counsel. He served on the Executive Committee of The Association of the Bar of the City of New York and is the former chair of the American Bar Association’s Committee of Corporate General Counsel. He has been a director of the board of directors for the Legal Aid Society of New York.
During Mr. Madison’s tenure at Comerica in Detroit, he was appointed vice chairman of the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation by then Mayor Dennis Archer. He also was a member of the board of trustees of the Henry Ford Health System and served as chairman of its subsidiary, Health Alliance Plan, Inc., one of Michigan’s largest health maintenance organizations.
Mr. Madison received the Judge Learned Hand Award from the American Jewish Committee. He is also the recipient of the NAACP’s 1997 Invaluable Pro Bono Legal Services Award, the MCCA’s 1998 Diversity 2000 Award, the Detroit Metropolitan Bar Association’s 2003 Distinguished Service Award, the 2003 State Bar of Michigan’s President’s Choice Award, the 2006 Paul Robeson Distinguished Alumni Award from Columbia Law School and the 2008 Corporate Social Responsibility Award of the Neighborhood Defenders Association of Harlem.
Mr. Madison holds a B.S. from New York University’s Stern School of Business, a J.D. from Columbia Law School and an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School.