The Senate Banking Committee voted along party lines Thursday morning to advance the nomination of Brian Johnson for director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), teeing up a full Senate vote that has not yet been scheduled.

A senior executive at Capital One since late 2024, Johnson was tapped in June by President Donald Trump to succeed outgoing Acting CFPB Director Russell Vought. Johnson served as deputy director during Trump’s first term.

While Democrats on the Republican-led banking committee have criticized the nomination due to Johnson’s proximity to the industries he would supervise as bureau chief, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said in a statement issued Thursday that Johnson’s blended experience in the public and private sectors makes him an appropriate selection.

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“We look forward to partnering with Brian Johnson and his team to pursue practical reforms that improve regulatory certainty, encourage innovation in mortgage lending, and help make homeownership more attainable for creditworthy borrowers,” said Bob Broeksmit, president and CEO of the MBA, in the statement.

While the timing of a vote on the Senate floor to confirm Johnson is uncertain, the probable new director will take over the bureau at a perilous moment in its relatively young existence. The CFPB was established through the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act to be a consumer financial watchdog and federal nonbank mortgage regulator in response to the 2008 financial crisis.

Over the past 15 years, however, the bureau has become a political yo-yo. Under Democratic administrations, CFPB leadership has frequently been accused of acting outside its statutory purview, particularly concerning enforcement overreach. Republican leadership has consistently tried to pull back on the bureau’s activities.

Only one Republican senator questioned Johnson during his nomination hearing before the banking committee in July, but he faced a grilling from Democrats who sought assurances that he would not pursue Vought’s efforts to shut down the mortgage regulator and consumer watchdog for good.

Numerous attempts by Vought to dismantle the CFPB since the second Trump administration took over in early 2025 have been rebuffed by courts. A lawsuit challenging Vought’s proposal to fire two-thirds of bureau employees is currently on hold pending Johnson’s confirmation.

During his July testimony, Johnson refused to break with Vought, who also serves as White House budget chief, in his push to shut down the bureau. He testified, however, that if confirmed he would make his “own decisions.”

To the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Johnson’s nomination is particularly troublesome given that the bureau dropped a $2 billion enforcement lawsuit against Capital One, Johnson’s employer, in early 2025. Capital One has denied accusations that it misled customers about interest rates on savings accounts.

“Where the CFPB writes clear and durable rules of the road, obeys its own statutory bounds, justly enforces the law and enables consumers to make their own financial decisions, both consumers and market participants win,” Johnson stated in prepared testimony in July.

He went on to say during his testimony that he believes the CFPB, when “properly structured and properly governed,” can be “capable of great good.” Johnson also claimed that “deficiencies in the current legislative structure” of the bureau prevent it from achieving that good.