FDA Official Steps Down, Sued by Drugmaker
George Tidmarsh, who resigned Sunday, is accused in a lawsuit of seeking a bribe and defaming a drug
A Food and Drug Administration official who resigned on Sunday was sued by a Canadian pharmaceutical company, which accused him of soliciting a bribe and tanking its stock with false statements as part of a revenge campaign against a former colleague.
Dr. George Tidmarsh was hired in July by FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary to lead the agency’s drug division, a top role regulating much of the country’s pharmaceutical industry that gave Tidmarsh a prominent perch in the Department of Health and Human Services headed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Drugmaker Aurinia Pharmaceuticals filed a lawsuit in federal court in Maryland on Sunday evening detailing its accusations against an official at an agency that this year has faced upheaval and uncertainty in the form of DOGE cuts, leadership departures and a slew of new policies.
A lawyer for Tidmarsh, Joseph Galda, said that he didn’t solicit a bribe.
A spokeswoman for HHS, which wasn’t named as a party to the lawsuit, said Tidmarsh resigned Sunday morning after being placed on administrative leave Friday. The HHS Office of the General Counsel and the Office of the Inspector General were notified of “serious concerns about his personal conduct,” the spokeswoman said.
“Secretary Kennedy expects the highest ethical standards from all individuals serving under his leadership and remains committed to full transparency,” the spokeswoman said.
Tidmarsh in September posted on LinkedIn that an FDA-approved kidney drug, voclosporin, had “not been shown to provide a direct clinical benefit for patients,” a highly unusual move for a government official in his position. The FDA said when it approved the drug in 2021 that the medicine had shown a “clinically meaningful benefit” in trials. Tidmarsh later took down the post and said he had been speaking in a personal capacity.
But the stock of Aurinia, the only maker of voclosporin, dropped 20% in a few hours, wiping out more than $350 million of market value, according to the lawsuit.
Aurinia and its U.S. subsidiary brought the suit against Tidmarsh, alleging defamation and injurious falsehood, and seeking damages for its losses, plus punitive damages.
Tidmarsh told the New York Times that he had been placed on administrative leave after he raised concerns about a new-fast track program for drugs. He said he was told he had been placed on leave because of an investigation into a LinkedIn post he wrote, the Times reported.
An HHS official said the personal conduct brought to the attention of HHS lawyers and the inspector general’s office related to the LinkedIn post.
Galda, Tidmarsh’s lawyer, said he didn’t have knowledge of the LinkedIn post and declined to comment on it.
Tidmarsh didn’t respond to requests for comment other than through his lawyer.
The unusual LinkedIn post followed years of antagonism from Tidmarsh directed at Aurinia board chair Kevin Tang, who once pushed Tidmarsh out of a chief executive role at a different company, the lawsuit alleged.
Tang, a pharmaceutical investor, and Tidmarsh first clashed in 2019 when, according to the lawsuit, Tang asked Tidmarsh to resign as CEO from La Jolla Pharmaceutical, where Tang was board chair. Tidmarsh stepped down, and a company press release from the time said Tidmarsh was leaving to “pursue other interests.”
Tang declined to comment.
Over the next several years, Tidmarsh sent a series of spiteful messages to Tang and his business associates, the lawsuit said. “You will be exposed,” he wrote in one text message to Tang quoted in the complaint. “Are you enjoying failure? Get used to it,” he wrote in another message included in the complaint.
Tidmarsh met Makary at a conference last October and helped prepare Dr. Jay Bhattacharya for his confirmation as National Institutes of Health director, he said in an FDA video this year. He was “working with the new FDA,” he said in a LinkedIn post in November, to remove from the market desiccated thyroid extracts, a product critical to another company led by Tang, American Laboratories Holdings. “I’m not powerless,” he told Tang in another message in December, according to the complaint.
Tidmarsh had previously worked as a director at American Laboratories from 2015 to around 2019. Between 2018 and 2025 the company paid him more than $22.5 million, according to the lawsuit.
In August, after Tidmarsh started work at the FDA, the agency warned patients away from the thyroid extracts and said it would take action against the products.
That same month, according to the complaint, Tidmarsh’s personal lawyer, Galda, emailed Tang: “It is my understanding,” he wrote, that American Laboratories “may have issues that require” extending for another 10 years an agreement between the company and Tidmarsh. Under the agreement, Tidmarsh had been receiving payments from the company for past services, and when he joined the FDA rerouted those payments to a limited liability corporation benefiting his sons to comply with ethics rules, according to an email included in the complaint.
The email from Galda “transparently reflects an attempt to extort and solicit a bribe,” the complaint alleged.
Galda said the email was taken out of context and is contradicted by other messages. He said he wasn’t referencing the thyroid extracts and that the email was meant to keep options open for Tidmarsh to help the company after he left the FDA.
After he received the email, Tang contacted law-enforcement officials through a lawyer, the complaint said.
A month later, Tidmarsh posted on LinkedIn his negative comments about voclosporin, used to treat lupus nephritis, a condition that can lead to kidney failure. The comments continued his campaign of retaliation against Tang and confused doctors and patients, the lawsuit alleged.