Jina Choi is a partner in the San Francisco office of Gibson Dunn. She is Co-Chair of the firm’s Securities Enforcement Practice Group and a member of the firm’s White Collar Defense and Investigations and Crisis Management Practice Groups. Jina defends public companies, pre-IPO and venture-backed technology companies, financial institutions, hedge funds, asset managers and other financial market participants – as well as their boards of directors, audit committees, and executives – in government investigations and enforcement-related litigation. She conducts internal investigations for boards and audit committees and advises companies on corporate governance, whistleblower complaints, and compliance programs.
Jina is one of the few enforcement lawyers who has held senior leadership roles on every side of securities enforcement matters – as an SEC enforcement leader, a federal prosecutor, and defense counsel in private practice.
Practice
Clients call Jina at the first sign of a high-stakes problem: an SEC subpoena or voluntary request, a Wells notice, a whistleblower complaint, a short-seller report or press investigation, a restatement or material weakness, or a criminal inquiry running alongside the SEC’s. Her matters involve alleged financial reporting and accounting fraud, revenue recognition and disclosure issues, insider trading, market manipulation, offering and investment fraud, auditor misconduct, investment adviser and broker-dealer violations, valuation of complex financial instruments, digital assets, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Rule 105 of Regulation M, and other trading violations.
Technology is at the core of Jina’s practice. She represents venture-backed and pre-IPO companies working at the frontier of new technology – including artificial intelligence and advanced computing, financial technology, life sciences, and next-generation transportation – as well as long-established public companies and financial institutions. Many of her clients are companies whose business models do not map neatly onto existing regulatory categories, which is frequently what draws the government’s attention in the first place.
Government Experience
Jina’s unique fluency with frontier technology and enforcement issues was built in government as much as in private practice. As the Director of the SEC’s San Francisco Regional Office, Jina led a staff of over 130 attorneys, accountants, and other professionals responsible for the agency’s enforcement and compliance programs in Northern California, Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, and Alaska. In this role she oversaw a series of first-of-their-kind enforcement actions against private “unicorn” technology companies and their senior officers, including the SEC’s enforcement action against Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes. She supervised teams investigating and litigating the agency’s most complex and groundbreaking matters in accounting fraud, disclosure fraud, investment fraud, FCPA violations, insider trading, market manipulation, Reg FD, and investment adviser and broker-dealer fraud.
While at the SEC, Jina provided training to officials at the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) of Hong Kong and the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC). She also worked in close partnership with the DOJ, CFTC, FINRA, California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI), state insurance regulators, and numerous foreign securities regulators worldwide.
As Chief of the Corporate and Securities Fraud Section at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, Jina supervised the Bay Area’s most complex corporate and securities criminal fraud investigations including matters involving technology, artificial intelligence, health care, and life sciences companies. Her earlier government service includes serving as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Texas and as a Trial Attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Recognition and Credentials
Jina has been recognized by Chambers USA and by Lawdragon as a Global Leader in Crisis Management, and is the only Northern California lawyer chosen as a Global Leader in both Securities Enforcement and White Collar. She is a frequent speaker on SEC enforcement developments, government investigations, regulatory developments, whistleblowers, corporate resolutions and compliance, and is regularly quoted in the business and legal press. She has served as a guest lecturer at Stanford Law School, NYU School of Law, University of California Law San Francisco and the University of Virginia School of Law.
Jina is on the Steering Committee for Women in Securities (WISe), a founding member of the Executive Committee for the SEC Enforcement Subsection of the Bar Association of San Francisco, and served on the board of the Asian Law Caucus.
Jina earned her Juris Doctor from Yale Law School, where she was Executive Editor for the Yale Law and Policy Review and a Harlan Fiske Stone Prize Semifinalist, and her Bachelor of Arts from Oberlin College. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable Robert P. Patterson, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Representative Experience:*
- Obtained an expedited declination from the SEC for a late-stage private technology company investigated after press reports of alleged misconduct.
- Obtained closure with no charges against a foreign issuer in an SEC and DOJ investigation concerning one of its investments.
- Conducted an independent investigation for an investment research firm regarding allegations of misuse of material nonpublic information.
- Conducted an internal investigation of a publicly traded enterprise software company regarding allegations of inappropriate revenue recognition.
- Secured early confirmation that a publicly traded technology company was not a target of a federal criminal investigation concerning public corruption and bribery.
- Represents large and small accounting firms in enforcement investigations by the SEC and the Canadian Public Accountability Board (CPAB).
- Represents life sciences issuers in SEC market abuse and trading investigations.
- Represented a life sciences company in DOJ investigation regarding alleged clinical data manipulation. No charges were brought against the client.
- Represented the chief executive officer of a public company in parallel SEC and DOJ investigations concerning insider trading and market manipulation. No charges were brought against the client.
- Represented the chief financial officer of a publicly traded company in an SEC investigation concerning projections made in connection with its initial public offering. No charges were brought against the client.
- Represented a former senior executive of a public company in an SEC disclosure fraud investigation. No charges were brought against the client.
- Represented a senior executive of a public company in an SEC insider trading investigation. No charges were brought against the client.
- Represented the chief executive officer of a public company in an SEC disclosure investigation. No charges were brought against the client.
* Includes matters handled prior to joining Gibson Dunn
Representative Speaking Engagements
- Center for Professional Education, “SEC Enforcement Issues: A New Day Takes Shape” (2026)
- Securities Enforcement Forum, “Defending Parallel Investigations Involving the SEC, USAO, State AGs, and Others” (2026)
- Stanford Law School Speaker Series, “Privilege Risk in the Age of AI” (2026)
- Practising Law Institute, “Hedge Fund and Private Equity Enforcement and Regulatory Developments: Running an Effective Compliance Program in Today’s Environment” (2026)
- The Bar Association of San Francisco, “The Inside Scoop: What’s New – and What’s Next – in Insider Trading Law and Enforcement: Predictions Markets and Wire Fraud Revival” (2026)
Capabilities
- White Collar Defense and Investigations
- Accounting Firm Advisory and Defense
- Crisis Management
- Family Office
- Securities Enforcement
- Securities Litigation
- Securities Regulation and Corporate Governance
Credentials
Education:
- Yale University - 1994 Juris Doctor
- Oberlin College - 1991 Bachelor of Arts
Admissions:
- California Bar
- New York Bar