“I relied very heavily on him for his advice and judgment,” Paulson said. “He is smart as a whip, knows the law cold and understands the investment banking business.”

Sleeping in Chambers
The soft-spoken general counsel cut a contrasting image to Blankfein, an extrovert with a big personality. Yet while Palm’s relatively droll humor occasionally rubbed some senior executives the wrong way, the pair grew close over the years, according to a former partner who worked with them.

Neither hail from the elite backgrounds that produce many other Wall Streeters. Palm was raised in a rural town along the Chenango River in upstate New York. He rode a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he studied economics, physics and math -- a somewhat eclectic start for a lawyer-to-be. He then went on to Harvard where he got his J.D., as did Blankfein, who had grown up in Brooklyn.

After Harvard, Palm clerked for a prominent appellate judge, working such long hours that he became known for sleeping in the chambers at least two nights a week. He went on to apprentice for Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell.

It was Powell who recommended Palm to Sullivan & Cromwell, the white-shoe law firm that’s long catered to Wall Street. After leading S&C’s corporate practice, Palm joined Goldman Sachs in 1992. It was a somewhat unusual move at a time when successful attorneys considered the role of an in-house lawyer to be a backwater posting.

“When I started, major financial institutions used to rely on outside law firms for their key legal advice,” said Rodge Cohen, a doyen in the world of Wall Street lawyers. “Greg was one of the forerunners of the general counsel being the true legal adviser for the financial firm.”

Admitting ‘Mistake’
Palm’s been busy in recent years. He testified before the Senate Banking Committee as the government bailed out the financial industry in 2008. And he later fought a high-profile battle to defend Goldman Sachs as it was vilified over claims it had cheated investors in securities tied to mortgages.

That included tense negotiations with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which had sprung a surprise lawsuit over what came to be known as the Abacus scandal. He annoyed SEC officials by his unwillingness to express remorse for Goldman Sachs’s actions, according to a person familiar with the negotiations. Eventually, the bank paid a record fine and admitted it made “a mistake” in marketing materials.

Last year, the firm added a co-general counsel, Karen Seymour, also from Sullivan & Cromwell. Seymour, famous for having prosecuted Martha Stewart, has been shepherding the firm’s 1MDB negotiations as authorities around the globe look to extract a big fine from Goldman Sachs.

At an event last year, another Sullivan & Cromwell litigator joked about an aspect of Palm that’s rarely seen.