Anthony Valenzuela

Anthony Valenzuela is a seasoned financial services litigator and award-winning regulatory attorney. He brings robust first-chair litigation capabilities to West Coast markets, leveraging over a decade of managing both domestic and global regulatory investigations and extensive in-house experience. Before joining the firm, he served as general counsel and global head of government relations and legislative affairs for OKX—the world's third-largest crypto exchange by trading volume—where he built a global legal department and supported every aspect of the company's worldwide digital assets business.

Anthony has handled hundreds of commercial disputes, class actions, employment matters, and securities arbitrations, among other high-stakes litigation, including first-chairing 40+ securities arbitrations to verdict during earlier in-house roles at Morgan Stanley and Charles Schwab, achieving a claimants' recovery rate of less than 4% of alleged damages in those cases. At Schwab, he also managed federal and state regulatory actions related to its investment adviser custodial platform and other compliance areas and was specifically recognized for his successful resolution of the DOJ's antitrust investigation amid Schwab's acquisition of TD Ameritrade in 2020.

Anthony has served on the front lines of virtually every issue faced by crypto exchanges and has established relationships with regulators, policymakers, and other leaders in the business. Under his leadership, the OKX legal team expanded from 3 to 35+ attorneys in just a few years, supporting every aspect of the exchange's global digital assets business related to litigation, regulatory affairs, M&A, employment, marketing, token listing legal review, intellectual property, contract negotiation, product compliance, MiCA compliance, and responses to subpoenas and law enforcement inquiries.

His expertise in managing U.S. and global regulatory investigations spans interactions with the DOJ, SEC, CFTC, FINRA, and state securities regulators, as well as international bodies across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Australia. He supports a range of legal work in California and beyond, including wealth management litigation, trading and operational disputes among broker-dealers and RIAs, commercial litigation, class actions, employment disputes, internal investigations, fintech litigation, regulatory interactions with the California offices of the SEC and FINRA, and employee mobility representation.