Goldman asks top lawyer to stay as Epstein scrutiny grows

Goldman Sachs is trying to preserve continuity at the top of its legal stack even as the politics around Kathryn Ruemmler get louder. David Solomon asked the firm’s chief legal officer and general counsel to stay on as an adviser after she had already said she would leave, a signal that Goldman still values her institutional knowledge even while the reputational cost keeps rising.

Ruemmler’s departure from the general counsel role had been set for June 30. Goldman said in February that she would retire effective that date, and Solomon later described her as an extraordinary general counsel who would be missed. He later said he had reluctantly accepted her resignation. The firm now plans to move Michael Bosworth into the interim general counsel job in July while it looks for a permanent replacement. Bosworth joined Goldman in 2022 after working at Latham & Watkins.

The stakes are bigger than a single seat in the legal department. Ruemmler also co-chairs Goldman’s reputational risk committee, which means her role reaches beyond contracts and litigation into the firm’s judgment on sensitive client issues, board communication and how the bank responds when a controversy threatens to spill into the business. In a platform like Goldman, where the general counsel sits close to the board and the executive suite, any leadership gap can unsettle compliance teams, deal teams and anyone who depends on a fast legal read before taking action.

That leadership question became harder to contain on June 9, when Senate Banking Committee leaders sent Solomon a letter pressing for more information. The letter from Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi asked for answers by June 26 on what Goldman knew about Ruemmler’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, why the bank defended her after Justice Department document releases and why Solomon moved to keep her at Goldman. The lawmakers said the January DOJ releases included more than 10,000 documents mentioning Ruemmler and appeared to show her advising Epstein on legal and press strategy, accepting gifts and discussing personal matters.

The controversy has already shaped the way Goldman’s succession plans are being read inside and outside the firm. The legal chief is not just another senior banker on the org chart. That person helps manage regulatory exposure, frames board-level risk and often becomes the person everyone turns to when a sensitive issue could become a public one. Fresh criticism from lawmakers over Solomon’s backing of Ruemmler, reported on June 10, shows the matter is still moving in the wrong direction. For Goldman employees, the lesson is blunt: when a top lawyer becomes the center of a public fight, succession planning, trust and firmwide governance stop being abstractions and start affecting daily work.