The National Association of Securities Dealers announced today that its head of enforcement is leaving the regulator in the spring.

Barry Goldsmith, executive vice president for enforcement, will leave NASD in mid-March to return to private practice, it reported. Goldsmith, 56, has served as NASD’s senior enforcement official for nearly 10 years and has been responsible for overseeing the investigation and prosecution of disciplinary actions at the national and district levels.

Goldsmith will become a partner in the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP’s Washington, D.C. office. Senior vice president and deputy head of enforcement, James Shorris, has been named acting head of enforcement.

The NASD said that Goldsmith spearheaded its investigations in a number of precedent-setting areas, including its probes of IPO allocation practices by major securities dealers, research analyst conflicts of interest, arbitration abuses, boiler room fraud, mutual fund share class sales practice abuses, hedge fund marketing practices and sales of variable annuities and variable life products by retail brokerage firms.

Under his direction, the number of enforcement department staff more than doubled to 216 attorneys, investigators, technologists and administrative personnel. The number of new enforcement actions filed each year reached record numbers, growing from 975 in 1995 to 1,399 in 2005. As the quality and significance of individual enforcement cases grew, disciplinary fines collected rose from $5.3 million in 1995 to $127.5 million in 2005.

“Investor confidence has been badly shaken by a series of scandals in the recent past, and a major key to rebuilding and maintaining investor confidence has been vigorous enforcement of our securities laws and regulations,” said NASD chairman and CEO Robert Glauber. “Barry Goldsmith and his department have demonstrated to investors over and over again that there is a tough and tireless cop on the securities beat. We at NASD thank him for his enormous contribution, and we wish him every success in his new endeavors.”

Before joining NASD in 1996, Goldsmith served as chief litigation counsel for the US Securities and Exchange Commission, where he was responsible for the conduct, supervision, and evaluation of all enforcement litigation conducted by the agency. Among the matters for which he had significant responsibilities were the SEC’s landmark federal court cases against Drexel Burnham Lambert and Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky and Victor Posner.