(Reuters) - O'Melveny & Myers has added an attorney who helped set the fintech enforcement agenda at the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as counsel in its Washington, D.C. office.

Melissa Baal Guidorizzi comes to the firm from her role as senior counsel for policy and strategy at the CFPB's enforcement division. She had worked for the agency since 2013 on regulation and enforcement related to cryptocurrency, payment cards and financial technology and more. She joins the firm's fintech, financial services and payments practices.

Guidorizzi was at the agency when it announced a $185 million settlement with Wells Fargo for opening millions of fake accounts in customers' names.

She said in an interview on Thursday that, in private practice, she hopes to offer clients her experience interpreting how existing laws and regulations apply to emerging consumer finance products, which some see as a "grey area."

"That's where all the action is," she said.

On what to expect from the CFPB going forward, Guidorizzi said that while the agency's enforcement office has been "very hard at work" over the last two years, she anticipates an increase in enforcement, and that more non-bank fintech products "are going to be subject to the Bureau."

Before her time in government, Guidorizzi worked for eight years in-house at Citigroup. Earlier in her career, she did stints as an associate at the firm then known as Andrews & Kurth, Dickstein Shapiro and Clifford Chance.

Laurel Loomis Rimon, a partner in the firm's fintech practice group who previously worked alongside Guidorizzi at the CFPB, said in an interview that hiring her former colleague was part of the firm's strategy to offer fintech clients "forward thinking" advice. Rimon, who joined O'Melveny in 2018, called consumer protection "a next-generation issue" for the industry.

The firm's fintech practice group includes 16 partners based in California, New York and Washington, D.C.