Hillary D. Phelps

Hillary Phelps is a partner and member of Chapman's National Public Finance Department. She serves as bond counsel, disclosure counsel, and underwriter’s counsel for a wide variety of tax-exempt and taxable financings throughout the country, focusing primarily on higher education, municipal, and not-for-profit transactions. Additionally, Hillary advises clients with respect to various municipal securities issues, including post-issuance compliance and related regulatory matters.

Hillary’s career started at Chapman. Prior to rejoining the firm, she served from 2015 to 2019 as senior counsel in the Office of Municipal Securities at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which is responsible for administering SEC rules on the practices of broker-dealers, municipal advisors, investors, and issuers in the municipal securities area, focusing on rulemaking, legislation, and policy formulation. While at the SEC, Hillary was instrumental in advancing a number of SEC municipal disclosure initiatives, including proposing and finalizing amendments to Rule 15c2-12 and coordinating the inaugural SEC conference on municipal disclosure.

In addition to her experience at the SEC, Hillary previously served on the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s (MSRB) Market Transparency Advisory Group, which advised the MSRB Board of Directors on strategic initiatives to modernize and enhance the EMMA website and related systems in support of market transparency.