Pandas Dataframe.from_records has an Exclude parameter:

exclude : sequence, default None
Columns or fields to exclude

The logic for column exclusion can be found here.

Since for my specific use case, I'd like to exclude most of my columns, and would rather just specify which columns to include, I'd love to also see an Include parameter here.

Arbitrarily, if a field were both Included and Excluded it could be excluded (or throw an error).