For more than 14 years, Mr. Johnson has worked with both large and small investment management and broker-dealer clients to ensure the stability and security their businesses to help them reduce both enterprise and regulatory compliance risk.  

 His practice includes helping investment advisers, financial planners, broker-dealers, hedge funds, CPA firms, their registered personnel, public and private companies navigate the  maze of securities regulation that impacts their success.  That help may involve preparing for and assisting with regulatory examinations, registration, enforcement defense, internal investigations, handling related litigation and arbitrations.

His past regulatory and litigation experience encompassed virtually every type of securities dispute imagined, including misrepresentations, fraud, churning, unsuitability, unauthorized trading,  breach of fiduciary duty, illegal or excessive markups,  selling away, political contributions, ACAT problems, margin violations, clearing broker liability, books and  records violations, and supervisory issues.                                                                                                                                                                    

Prior to co-founding Mallon & Johnson, P.C., he worked at the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.  While with the SEC, Mr. Johnson prosecuted enforcement actions in both the public and private sector involving securities fraud, including, accounting fraud, broker-dealer rule violations, Ponzi schemes, and books and records violations.  Prior to that Mr. Johnson was in private practice with the law firm of Sidley & Austin where his practice involved financial regulation. 

Mr. Johnson is a member of the Illinois bar and the federal bar of  the Northern District of Illinois.  He received his law degree in 1983 from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a law review editor for the American Criminal Law Review.  After law school, Mr. Johnson also served for two years as a judicial law clerk to a United States District Court Judge  In the past he has served as Co-Chair of the Securities Law Committee of the Chicago Bar Association; Vice Chair of the Securities Law Committee of the Chicago Bar Association; and Co-Chair of the Securities Litigation and Enforcement Committee of the Chicago Bar Association.

He has appeared in Illinois Super Lawyers, as one of the top five percent of attorneys in the practice area of securities litigation in the State of Illinois (as chosen by their peers and through independent research and survey of 47,000 attorneys). 

His written publications in the securities arena have included, a  chapter in the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education’s   Securities Law series entitled “Key Considerations in the Private Placement of Securities.”  He has written articles on white-collar crime,  insider trading, and retail brokerage litigation.  Some of the articles written include:  The Role of Institutional Investors After the Securities  Reform Act:  Will Institutional Investors Act as Lead Plaintiff? 25 Securities Regulation Law Journal 387 (Winter 1998); Staying Out of Trouble with the SEC:  Tips for the Brokerage Firm, 44 The Practical Lawyer 47 (January 1998); No One Escapes:  Why Managers are liable for the Wrongdoing of subordinates, Registered Representative Magazine, Volume 21 Number 10 (October 1997).  He has also co-authored “SEC Enforcement,” a chapter in the securities manual published by the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education.