White House Nominates 2 to SEC Posts : Regulation: One is an Ohio law school professor, the other a Utah securities specialist. Both were trial attorneys for the panel.

WASHINGTON —  The White House on Wednesday nominated an Ohio law school professor and a Utah securities specialist to fill two seats on the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Isaac C. Hunt Jr., 57, and Norman Johnson, 64, both served as SEC trial attorneys in the 1960s.

Hunt is a professor and recently retired dean at the Akron University School of Law. A specialist in securities law, he also served as dean of the Antioch School of Law in Washington. During the Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan administrations, he held legal positions in the Department of the Army.

Johnson is a specialist in state and securities law at the Salt Lake City firm of Van Cott, Bagley, Cornwall & McCarthy. He served as president of the Utah State Bar Assn. from 1985 to 1986 and was also a delegate to the association’s national conventions.

The five-member, bipartisan SEC is Wall Street’s main federal regulator. Commissioners serve staggered five-year terms.

The Clinton Administration has been criticized by Wall Street executives and some members of Congress for failing to quickly fill three empty seats on the five-member panel.

The SEC has been without its full five members since October, when Mary L. Schapiro left the SEC to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The next month, Carter Beese Jr. left the commission to rejoin his old firm, Alex. Brown & Sons Inc. Richard Roberts left last month after his term expired to join a venture capital firm.

SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt Jr. and Commissioner Steven M.H. Wallman have been running the commission. They have had to overcome complex logistic problems, since a meeting of the two would technically constitute a quorum and require an open-meeting notice.