Citi adds seasoned hand to lobbying team

Jim Johnson began work on July 15 as director of housing and Dodd-Frank advocacy, and has hit the ground running on Capitol Hill.

Johnson joined Citi from the American Securitization Forum, an industry trade group, where he established its Washington office, an internal Citi memo says.

{mosads}He told The Hill his decision to make the move was two-fold.

Johnson said he jumped at the opportunity to work at “a fantastic domestic bank with great global reach,” and praised its government affairs team – which includes Candi Wolff, Citi’s head of global government affairs, and John Emling, the head of federal government affairs.

Mortgage financing issues, Dodd-Frank implementation and the debate over capital requirements and other regulations will be on Johnson’s plate, he said.

“While I was on the Banking Committee, we handled a number of important matters,” he said, including student loan issues, credit card regulations and the financial reform overhaul in 2010.

Johnson left Congress following Dodd-Frank’s passage and says his background, in both that job and his trade association gig, contains a knowledge of “everything that went on during those [legislative] discussions.”

Combining his training as a lawyer “with working to inform the policy outcomes is a lot of fun,” he said.

Citi’s lobbying team has also hired Kristin Solheim, who will be leaving her position with Visa at the end of the month to serve in the bank’s global government affairs office, working as a director and specializing in mobile payments, cyber and card issues.

This post was updated on July 23.