By Paul Kiernan 

WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said Tuesday he has been approached by White House officials "in recent months" about the possibility of serving on the Fed's board of governors.

Mr. Bullard characterized the discussions as "exploratory in nature." He said he told the Trump administration that he is happy in his current position and noted that he currently sits on the Fed's rate-setting committee. But he declined to provide more detail or to specify the timing of his most recent contact.

"On the White House question, I don't think I'm going to go any further. If they want to talk about it, they can," Mr. Bullard told reporters. "There are lots of feelers, lots of channels, lots of speculation about this kind of thing, so it's not uncommon at all."

The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Trump administration is searching for candidates to fill two vacancies on the Fed's seven-member board, which helps to set monetary policy and wide-reaching financial regulation. President Trump has frequently criticized the Fed for keeping interest rates too high, likening the 105-year-old central bank, in a Monday tweet, to "a stubborn child."

Mr. Bullard has tended to favor lower interest rates than some of his fellow central bankers in recent years. At the Fed's most recent policy meeting, he cast the sole dissenting vote against holding rates in their current range of 2.25% to 2.5%, preferring to lower borrowing costs by a quarter percentage point.

Earlier Tuesday he said in an interview on Bloomberg television that he didn't think the Fed needed to lower the benchmark fed-funds rate by more than a quarter point at its next meeting in late July. He added via a conference call later in the afternoon that another quarter-point "insurance cut" was likely by the end of the year.

"If you went one move now and then another move later, you'd probably be slightly accommodative," Mr. Bullard told reporters. "That, hopefully, would shore up the inflation expectations that I've got my eye on, straighten out the yield curve and possibly get a nice upward slope in the yield curve, and get the probability of a recession down a little bit from where it is today."

The presidents of the Fed's regional reserve banks, including the St. Louis Fed, serve rotating, one-year terms as voting members of the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee. Members of the Washington-based board of governors enjoy a permanent vote.

Mr. Trump has nominated four of the five current Fed governors, including Chairman Jerome Powell. After becoming frustrated with the Fed's decisions to raise interest rates last year, he began searching for less conventional candidates who shared his preference for easy-money policies that might aid the economy.

Bypassing his advisers, Mr. Trump earlier this year announced plans to nominate conservative pundit Stephen Moore and former Republican presidential contender Herman Cain, both close allies, to the central bank board. Both candidates withdrew from consideration after Senate Republicans expressed reservations about their qualifications and personal backgrounds.

Mr. Bullard would face a large pay cut if he were to accept a position on the Fed's board. According to the central bank's annual report, the St. Louis Fed president's salary in 2018 was $381,000. Fed governors earn $183,100.

Mr. Bullard is eligible to serve in his current post until 2026, when he would face a retirement age limit, according to data compiled by the Brookings Institution.

Nick Timiraos contributed to this article.

Write to Paul Kiernan at paul.kiernan@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 25, 2019 20:02 ET (00:02 GMT)