Jonathan L. Pompan is Of Counsel in the firm’s Washington, DC office. With extensive Washington experience, Mr. Pompan focuses his practice on providing comprehensive legal advice and regulatory advocacy to a broad spectrum of clients, including for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations and trade and professional associations. He also counsels clients in the areas of consumer protection and financial services. He helps his clients develop creative approaches to meet their objectives while complying with applicable regulatory frameworks.

Mr. Pompan is a frequent speaker and author on legal and regulatory issues of significance to providers of consumer financial products and services, advertisers and marketers, and nonprofit organizations.

Nonprofit Organizations and Trade and Professional Associations

Mr. Pompan has extensive experience counseling nonprofit organizations and trade and professional associations. He regularly assists clients with forming new nonprofits, affiliates and subsidiaries and in transactional matters, including nonprofit mergers and asset transfers, drafting agreements, corporate governance reviews, day-to-day antitrust matters, and ongoing compliance with the Internal Revenue Code. His practice regularly includes counseling organizations on compliance, regulatory and enforcement matters.

Consumer Financial Products and Services

A substantial portion of Mr. Pompan’s work involves advising clients on how to minimize the legal risks related to providing, advertising and marketing financial products and services to consumers under federal and state consumer protection laws, including laws and regulations under the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission and the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Mr. Pompan's experience includes representing various companies in state Attorney General and state banking/financial institution department investigations and enforcement actions; conducting compliance audits; and assisting in the formation and development of new companies, products and services.

Advertising and Marketing

Mr. Pompan is an experienced advertising attorney who regularly advises clients on consumer protection issues, specifically with regard to advertising and promotions, including digital media, as well as consumer credit and financial services laws and regulations. He has extensive experience in the issues surrounding mobile marketing, target marketing, lead generation, affiliate marketing, social media, and user-generated content. Mr. Pompan also defended clients in investigations and enforcement actions pursued by the FTC, state Attorneys General, and other state regulatory agencies, as well as in private litigation involving claims such as false or misleading advertising or unfair and deceptive trade practices.

Credit Counseling and Debt Services

Mr. Pompan is widely recognized as one of the leading credit counseling and debt services attorneys in the country. Mr. Pompan represents numerous clients in the credit counseling and debt services community, including nonprofit tax-exempt credit counseling agencies, housing counseling agencies, and a substantial number of industry-related service providers.

As a co-leader of our credit counseling and debt services compliance team, he has been actively involved on a policy level in representing industry segments on legal and legislative matters relating to their highly regulated services, developing public policy positions on a wide variety of industry issues, and securing legislative and regulatory changes favorable to the industry. As such, he has significant experience with all federal and state laws and regulations impacting this industry, including the federal Consumer Financial Protection Act and the Uniform Debt-Management Services Act.

Mr. Pompan's experience ranges from obtaining state debt adjusting licenses and otherwise ensuring compliance with state debt adjusting and related laws; to obtaining approval by the Executive Office for U.S. Trustees for pre-bankruptcy counseling and pre-discharge debtor education; to obtaining and maintaining federal tax-exempt status; to compliance with the FTC Act; Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act; Credit Repair Organizations Act; and federal telemarketing, fax and spam laws, including the Telemarketing Sales Rule.

Prior Experience

Mr. Pompan joined Venable after serving as in-house associate counsel at one of the nation's largest industry trade associations. His responsibilities included contracts, intellectual property (trademark and copyright), advertising, antitrust, general business/trade association matters, and counsel on federal and state regulatory advocacy. In this position, Mr. Pompan worked on matters such as negotiating hotel and convention contracts; pre-publication review of literature, web sites, and commercial advertising scripts; review of meeting minutes and agendas; the legal management of the association's trademark portfolio; the design and management of a contract management program; and numerous industry specific issues.

Mr. Pompan also has a significant amount of Washington regulatory and political experience in government. During law school, he served as a legal intern in the Office of the Commissioner Michael Powell at the Federal Communications Commission, and with the Enforcement Division of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the FTC.

Mr. Pompan also has previous law firm experience working on federal appropriations, legislative and administrative law matters.

Prior to attending law school, Mr. Pompan worked in the government relations office at The George Washington University, served as a Congressional Page, and worked on Capitol Hill.

Representative Experience

• Settled multiple state investigations and enforcement actions on behalf of various nonprofit and for-profit clients concerning consumer protection issues and related allegations.
• Represented various financial services companies in FTC investigations alleging violations of the FTC Act.
• Coordinates legislative and regulatory advocacy team for a financial education and counseling industry coalition and provides related strategic advice.
• Assists various clients in regulated industries with comprehensive state licensing (e.g., money transmitter, debt adjusting, debt collection, and mortgage loan origination) and the design of related compliance programs.
• Represents credit counseling agencies and national housing counseling intermediaries regarding compliance with federal and state consumer protection laws, including privacy rules.
• Represented an equity fund by providing due diligence consumer protection regulatory advice with respect to acquisition targets.
• Assists various clients, including online lead generators, in website design and development.
• Conducted a review of a major nationwide debt collector for compliance with the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
• Successfully guided the reorganization and transfer of the assets of a nonprofit, tax-exempt provider of financial education and counseling to an unrelated nonprofit, tax-exempt provider of similar services.

Activities