Sad news for the compliance community: James McGrath, author of the Internal Investigations blog and one of the more voluble and entertaining voices in this field, died this week of a heart attack.
McGrath was a regular on the compliance conference circuit, including Compliance Week’s own annual conference for many years. I could always count on Jim to see me first, give a hearty “Hey, how you doing?” from across the hotel lobby, and follow up with a bone-crushing handshake. We would inevitably end up at the hotel bar with other regulars such as Compliance Week columnist Tom Fox, Jay Rosen from Merrill Corp., and a rotating other list of folks who just liked to talk shop over a good drink.
A long-time resident of Ohio, since 2008 McGrath was the managing partner of McGrath & Grace, a boutique law firm in Cleveland that practiced in due diligence, investigations, whistleblower retaliation, and anti-corruption law. Prior to that he spent 15 years as the chief legal officer of a Justice Department anti-narcotics program based in Ohio, where he had plenty of experience in corruption and misconduct cases.
On his Internal Investigations blog, McGrath wrote about everything from Society of Corporate Compliance & Ethics meetings (which he attended regularly), to the National Football League (no surprise there; he once had a tryout with the New England Patriots), to supply chain misconduct, to bungled bureaucracy at the Veterans Administration.
McGrath was in his early 50s, and leaves behind a wife he married earlier this year.
Tom Fox—who, as always with compliance news, got the story first—has re-published a Q&A he did with McGrath in 2012, that captures some of the biographical high-lights of the man.
As much as compliance officers transit in weighty matters of fraud, securities filings, corruption, and boardroom intrigue, we should all remember that the profession is small, and for the truly enthusiastic compliance officer, fun. Jim was one of the fixtures in this community that made it fun, and he will be missed.
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