As a Partner at Cole-Frieman & Mallon LLP, Malhar advises fund sponsors and managers on fund structuring, Investment Company Act and Investment Advisers Act compliance, CFTC and commodities regulation, institutional investor negotiations, tokenization and token issuer representation, cross-border fund structuring, and AML/KYC/OFAC framework. His practice is informed by direct experience across tokenized fund products and real-world asset structuring, including work advising digital asset managers, token issuers, and digital asset gaming companies on money transmitter licensing and other state and federal securities laws.
Prior to rejoining Cole-Frieman & Mallon LLP as Partner, Malhar served as the Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel of Finality Capital Partners, a multi-vehicle digital asset investment platform with $140M in AUM spanning two venture and two liquid funds. In that role, he operated as a full-stack counsel across legal, compliance, finance, structuring, and investor relations, led CFTC regulatory analysis and exemption structuring, oversaw the firm’s AML/KYC compliance programme under US and Cayman law, and negotiated hundreds of agreements spanning venture financings ,token investments, fund documentation, and institutional side letters. He was also the president of Medici Investment Management, Inc., a sister organization of Finality Capital Partners, where he led legal and structuring work for Medici’s on-chain vault products, including infrastructure services agreements and treasury commitment negotiations with third-party blockchain protocols.
Earlier in his career, as a corporate transactional attorney at Cole-Frieman & Mallon LLP, Malhar structured and launched over 100 investment funds, including RIAs and exempt reporting advisers, and served as the firm’s leading tokenized fund attorney, structuring one of the first tokenized money market funds to reach market. He has represented digital asset token issuers on formation and regulatory analysis, advised on M&A transactions in the digital asset sector, and counseled clients on FinCEN money transmitter licensing exposure.
Malhar holds a Juris Doctor from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, and a Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of California, Riverside. He is admitted to the California Bar. In his free time, Malhar enjoys playing soccer, basketball and staying active at the gym.
