Ex-Focus Financial lawyer joins SEC amid Trump’s fiduciary rule shakeup

Rusty McGranahan, a former top lawyer at BlackRock and the RIA aggregator Focus Financial Partners, has been named general counsel of the SEC as the Trump adminstration proposes a new fiduciary rule to outline advisor' duties when recommending alternative assets for retirement plans.

The SEC announced Thursday that McGranahan will oversee the provision of legal advice to SEC chairman Paul Atkins, as well as the agency’s commissioners and staff. Jeffrey Finnell, who was serving as the SEC’s acting general counsel, now shifts to being deputy general counsel at the agency. Also this week, the Labor Department submitted its proposed rule entitled “Fiduciary Duties in Selecting Designated Investment Alternatives” 

McGranahan previously spent nearly a decade as general counsel at Focus Financial Partners from 2015 to 2024, a tenure that included Focus’s initial public offering in 2018 and subsequent take-private sale to private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice in 2023. McGranahan spent most of 2025 as general counsel of the General Services Administration, an independent government agency that supports federal agencies and was crucial in implementing the Trump administration’s DOGE cost-cutting agenda.

“I have known Rusty for many years and am excited to have recruited someone of his caliber and experience to my senior team,” Atkins said in a statement. “In addition to being a seasoned securities and M&A lawyer, he has served as both a public company and government agency general counsel.”

Prior to Focus, McGranahan spent nine years at BlackRock as the firm’s managing director, M&A counsel and corporate secretary. His hire at the SEC comes as the Trump administration’s Department of Labor (DOL) withdrew its defense of the Biden‑era retirement security fiduciary rule, effectively halting its implementation that aimed to expand the definition of a fiduciary to cover investment advisors guiding 401(k) rollovers and small employer retirement plans.

“The Trump administration is clearly committed to freeing up private‑sector businesses to work with plans for new products, new services, and creativity,” employee benefits lawyer Fred Reish told InvestmentNews. “Advisors and fiduciaries are going to have to be particularly careful about distinguishing between new or changed things that are good and those that are bad. So it’s a shift of the burden from the regulators onto the fiduciaries.”

Reish joined the $30 billion RIA Prime Capital Financial last month to serve as its new director of fiduciary and ERISA practice (Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.) McGranahan’s experience in both public and private sectors positions him to advise the SEC on legal questions arising from these shifts as private equity and alternative assets are expected to enter 401(k) plans.

“I do think there are legal and policy issues that have to be dealt with. For example, the 401(k) world is used to daily trading, they’re used to low costs, they’re used to transparency,” said Reish. “Private funds by and large are none of those things. I’m not saying they can’t be; I’m just saying as they are right now, they haven’t gotten there yet.”