Who are you, Mr. Clayton? A Portrait of US Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton

On August 3, 2026, Walter Joseph “Jay” Clayton III took the helm of the US intelligence community. Clayton is a corporate lawyer who has spent more than two decades working with the biggest financial institutions on Wall Street and has not a shred of experience in intelligence. Yet he was the one entrusted with the position of US Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

The appointment of Jay Clayton as Director of National Intelligence comes across as a staffing decision rooted more in political reliability and pliability than in relevant expertise. A look at Clayton’s career reveals a leader who was convenient for those in power – someone easier to manage than to hold out for a tough, independent stance.

Before entering government, Jay Clayton’s career had been tied primarily to big business: after studying at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Cambridge, he spent more than twenty years at the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, where he represented the interests of major financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, Barclays, and Deutsche Bank. His wife, Gretchen Butler Clayton, also worked at Goldman Sachs.

In 2016, after Donald Trump came to power, Clayton drew up a proposal at the request of one of his clients to ease government banking regulation. That project effectively served as Joseph Clayton’s entry ticket into the incoming presidential administration. In 2017, he was appointed chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).