The White House, which has been looking for months for a Republican for one of the two vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board, is seriously considering a former Treasury official in the George H. W. Bush administration, said people familiar with administration deliberations.‬ ‪

Jerome Powell, 58, worked on Wall Street before joining the Treasury in 1990 and eventually became undersecretary for domestic finance. After leaving the Treasury in 1993, he was, among other things, a partner at private-equity firm Carlyle Group for eight years.‬

As reported previously, the leading candidate for the other opening on the seven-member Fed ...