James is currently Acting General Counsel for the UK Information Commissioner’s Office, having been appointed as Director of Legal Services for Regulatory Enforcement in January 2019. He is responsible for overseeing all the legal work of the ICO and providing legal advice to the Commissioner, executive team and management board. His areas of interest & focus include regulatory enforcement co-operation in particular in the digital/online sphere and the development of privacy law and policy to keep pace with the development of technology. He first joined the ICO on secondment from his previous role as a specialist regulatory lawyer with DLA Piper to lead the legal aspects of Operation Cederberg, the Commissioner’s investigation into data analytics for political purposes which included the ‘Cambridge Analytica’ affair. Prior to joining the ICO James spent ten years dealing with all aspects of regulatory law, including investigations and prosecutions involving money laundering, carousel and boiler room fraud, export control and sanctions issues, proceeds of crime and confiscation and Anti-Bribery & corruption with a focus on cases involving complex interactions of different regulatory areas across jurisdictions. Whilst the majority of his practice involved advising and defending large international Corporates he also headed a prosecuting team handing environmental cases on behalf of a regulatory body.