Robert Brian Thompson, a former long-time employee at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, will serve 24 months in federal prison for an insider trading scheme he perpetrated while working as a bank examiner at the central bank.

The 44-year-old Chesterfield resident was sentenced Tuesday in federal court in Richmond, in a hearing that weighed whether his punishment should be on par with those of other similar first-time offenders, or harsher due to his status as a Fed employee in a regulatory position.

Thompson’s attorney, Megan Rahman of law firm Troutman Pepper Locke, in arguing for a lesser sentence of 15 months, told Judge M. Hannah Lauck that her client had no prior criminal record, accepted responsibility for his crimes, cooperated with federal prosecutors and didn’t spend the $771,000 in profits he reaped from his insider trades. In fact, he was prepared to pay the money back in full on the day of his sentencing.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Garnett, while acknowledging those positive after-the-fact traits, emphasized the 3.5-year duration of Thompson’s crimes, and argued they were a violation of the public’s trust in institutions like the Federal Reserve.

Thompson’s scheme involved him using inside information obtained through his job at the Fed to trade on the stocks of the same financial institutions he was tasked with examining and then concealing his actions.

Thompson worked at the Fed from 2004 until early last year, helping to regulate 18 large banks – those with assets of more than $100 billion.

Among those banks under his purview were Capital One and New York Community Bancorp, whose stock Thompson traded illegally with the help of non-public information to which he had access. Thompson was charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office on Nov. 8, 2024, and pleaded guilty days later on Nov. 19.

Garnett, in requesting a 30-37-month sentence, reminded the judge that federal guidelines would call for the same sentencing range for someone who had committed just a single insider trade. However, Thompson committed dozens of illegal trades from 2020 to 2024 while also lying to his employer on the Fed’s annual employee financial disclosure forms.

“There’s a lot of good to Mr. Thompson,” Garnett said, but added, “the defendant stole because because he was frustrated with his job and thought he deserved more.”

Thompson, addressing Lauck in a black suit, white shirt and pink striped tie, spoke of his remorse and his acceptance of his legal predicament.

“I stand before you today regretful and deeply ashamed,” Thompson said. “I am guilty of these actions and I deserve to be punished.”

The South Boston, Virginia native and Longwood University alum apologized to the Federal Reserve, acknowledging that his crimes degrade the public’s trust in the institution. The married father of two also choked up when apologizing to his family and supporters, about a dozen of whom were in the courtroom on Tuesday.

“I would do anything for a do-over here, but those don’t exist in this life,” he said.

Lauck, before handing down the sentence, tried to get to the bottom of why Thompson did what he did after living an otherwise honest and productive life. He’s college educated, had a long-running, high-paying career at a respected public institution, so why go astray in such a major way?

Letters submitted to the court in recent weeks, including from Thompson himself, explained that his family’s money problems when he was growing up on a small farm in Victoria, Virginia, made him particularly concerned with his own children’s financial security. They argued that Thompson’s insider trading wasn’t to fund a lavish lifestyle, but to sock the money away as an extra cushion for his and his family’s future.

But Lauck didn’t fully buy that logic and she hit Thompson with a question that seemed to take him by surprise: she asked him how big his house is.

It’s around 4,000 square feet, with six bedrooms and an in-ground pool, Thompson replied.

“You’re 44 years old and you live in a 4,100-square-foot house,” Lauck said, while also listing the value of his investment accounts and a net worth of $2 million.

“I think some people would say that’s lavish. You need to change your perspective,” she said. “How many 44-year-olds do you think live like that?”

Lauck suggested Thompson think about whether there was more at play than a desire for financial security. “It’s greed,” she said.

She encouraged Thompson to figure that out for himself in order to help prevent him from committing a similar act in the future.

“If you do it again, you don’t want to see me,” she sternly warned.

Lauck also agreed with prosecutors and with a victim impact statement by the Fed that such crimes do undermine the trust the public puts into government-related bodies like the Federal Reserve System.

“This government gets criticized all the time. You do extra harm when you give someone reason to say government workers are awful and don’t do their job,” Lauck said.

The 24-month sentence, Lauck told Thompson, “Frankly, that’s a gift.”

Thompson will remain free for three more weeks, as Lauck is allowing him to self-report to begin his prison term on April 17. She recommended he serve his time at FCU Butner, a low security federal prison in Butner, North Carolina, about two hours south of Richmond.