Melvin L. Watt

Congressman Mel Watt represented North Carolina’s 12th Congressional District from 1993 to 2014 (103rd-113th Congresses). Before coming to Congress, Watt was an attorney specializing in minority business and economic development law. In Congress, he served on the Committee on Financial Services (Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit and Insurance Housing and Community Opportunity Committee) and the Committee on the Judiciary (Subcommittee of Commercial and Administrative Law). He was the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet. Watt also served on the Joint Economic Committee. From his position on the Judiciary Committee, Watt used his experience as a former attorney specializing in minority rights. He took a lead role in negotiating the 2006 extension of the Voting Rights Act (H.R. 9), which passed by a vote of 390 to 33 in the House and with unanimous support in the Senate. He was also instrumental in supporting the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in the 111th Congress, which aimed to improve regulations and transparency in the financial services industry in the wake of the Great Recession. Watt retired from Congress when President Obama appointed him to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency in 2014. Watt earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School.