Michael S. Barr
Member of the Board of Governors
From the Board's official biography
Listed by the Board as: Michael S. Barr
Michael S. Barr took office as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on July 19, 2022, for an unexpired term ending January 31, 2032.
Michael S. Barr took office as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on July 19, 2022, for an unexpired term ending January 31, 2032. Mr. Barr served as the Vice Chair for Supervision of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from July 19, 2022, to February 28, 2025.
Prior to his appointment to the Board, Mr. Barr was the Joan and Sanford Weill Dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, the Frank Murphy Collegiate Professor of Public Policy, the Roy F. and Jean Humphrey Proffitt Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, and the founder and faculty director of the University of Michigan's Center on Finance, Law & Policy. At the University of Michigan Law School, Mr. Barr taught financial regulation and international finance and co-founded the International Transactions Clinic and the Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project.
Mr. Barr served as the U.S. Department of the Treasury's assistant secretary for financial institutions, 2009-2010. Under President William J. Clinton, he served as the Treasury Secretary's special assistant, as deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury, as special adviser to the President, and as a special adviser and counselor on the policy planning staff at the U.S. Department of State.
Additionally, Mr. Barr served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter during October Term 1993, and previously to the Honorable Pierre N. Leval, then of the Southern District of New York.
Mr. Barr received a BA in history from Yale University, an MPhil in international relations from Oxford University, and a JD from Yale Law School.
Quoted verbatim from the Board of Governors' biography of Michael S. Barr, a U.S. Government work in the public domain. Retrieved Sep 2, 2026, 2:26 a.m. ET. Nothing above is written by this site.
What a governor does
The Board of Governors has seven seats. Every governor is a permanent voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets the target range for the federal funds rate, and shares in the Board's other work: supervising the largest banks, setting reserve requirements and the discount rate, and overseeing the twelve regional Reserve Banks.
A full term is fourteen years, and the terms are staggered so that one expires every two years. The length is deliberate. It is meant to outlast any single President, so that a governor's decisions are not made with the next election in mind. A governor appointed to fill an unexpired term can be reappointed to a full one; a governor who has served a full term cannot.
How the Chair is chosen
The Chair and the two Vice Chairs are governors first. They are designated to those roles by the President from among the sitting governors, for four-year terms, and each designation is confirmed separately by the Senate. A Chair whose four-year designation ends can remain on the Board as a governor for the rest of their fourteen-year term.
The Chair presides over the Board and the FOMC, testifies to Congress twice a year, and gives the press conference after each meeting. On the Committee itself, the Chair holds one vote of twelve.
Where this fits
The full current roster, the twelve districts and the plain-language primer are on What is the Federal Reserve?. The meeting schedule is on the FOMC calendar.