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# FDA Taps DoJ Lawyer for CDER Compliance Head
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/fda-taps-doj-lawyer-for-cder-compliance-head/
- Published: 2016-12-13T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T21:54:39.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: Drugs, #legacy-id-D5137550

FDA has selected Department of Justice Office of International Affairs attorney **Donald D. Ashley** as CDER’s next Office of Compliance director, effective 1/9/2017\. Ashley replaces **Cynthia Schnedar**, who recused herself a year ago from working on substantive compliance actions because her husband, **Mark Polston**, had been named an equity partner at King and Spalding. In March, Schnedar resigned from the agency and joined consulting firm Greenleaf Health as the group’s new regulatory compliance executive vice president ([see story](https://www.fdaweb.com/ex-cder-compliance-head-schnedar-joins-greenleaf/)).

Ashley has 23 years of compliance and enforcement experience in criminal and fraud investigations, with 18 of those at the Department of Justice (DoJ). From 2012 to 2016, he served with the U.S. Embassy in Manila, Philippines, where he managed international law enforcement collaborations with the Philippines, Singapore, and Indonesia. Those activities focused on money laundering, public corruption, bribery, and fraud, according to FDA. He previously served with DoJ’s Office of Consumer Litigation (now the Consumer Protection Branch) and prosecuted crimes involving complex schemes to defraud consumers and federal agencies such as FDA. For example, he prosecuted and convicted a device manufacturer in Ohio for having reported falsified test results to the agency on potential side effects associated with a device, the agency says.

Ashley earned his law degree from Harvard Law School, and a bachelor’s degree in political science from John Carroll University in Ohio.