Cynthia Bookhart Adams is Head of U.S. Legal and General Counsel, TD Bank N.A.
Previously, Adams was Deputy General Counsel and also Managing Director and General Counsel for Litigation, Regulatory and Employment Legal at Jefferies LLC, a global investment banking firm. She led a team responsible for a wide array of litigation, enforcement, and investigation matters.
Prior to Jefferies, Adams held in-house legal roles at Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. She joined Citi from WilmerHale, where she represented financial institutions in regulatory investigations. Prior to WilmerHale, she was an enforcement attorney with FINRA (then NASD Regulation). Adams began her legal career at Sullivan & Cromwell, following a federal clerkship with the Hon. Emmet G. Sullivan in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Adams serves on the Board of Directors of the historic Harlem-based Northside Center for Child Development and is an Executive Committee Member for the Compliance & Legal Society of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA). She is a Fellow of the American Bar Association and member of Corporate Counsel Women of Color (CCWC).
Adams earned her law degree with honors from Howard University School of Law, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review, and her undergraduate degree from the College of William & Mary.
