The U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps traces its establishment to 29 July 1775, when the Second Continental Congress appointed William Tudor as “Judge Advocate of the Army.” Over the next 250 years, the path to the modern JAG Corps saw vast changes in military justice, in the composition and training of the Army’s legal professionals, and in the Army’s legal missions. As one of the Army’s oldest branches, the JAG Corps’s story reflects many broader currents that have shaped our Army and our Nation’s history.

On 9 April 2025, President Donald J. Trump published an executive order directing the Department of Defense (DoD) to submit a plan to reform the DoD acquisition process.1 The order directed the DoD to employ, among other mechanisms, “existing authorities to expedite acquisitions through the [DoD], including . . . a general preference for Other Transactions Authority [(OTA)].”2 On 30 April 2025, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth published a memorandum, titled Army Transformation and Acquisition Reform, directing the “[e]xpan[sion] [of] the use of [OTA] agreements to enable faster prototyping and fielding of critical technologies; this includes software and software-defined hardware.”³

You will not find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns, and even wars have been won or lost primarily because of logistics. – General Dwight D. Eisenhower1

American Football fan or not, you have likely heard of Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. I will wager, however, that you have never heard of Clyde Christensen. At the time of his retirement in 2023, Coach Christensen had forty-four years of football coaching under his belt—twenty-seven of those in the National Football League (NFL).1 In that span, he was the quarterback coach for both Peyton Manning and Tom Brady—two of the greatest ever to play the position. Manning entered the NFL Hall of Fame in 2021 as a “first-ballot” select;2 that is, he was elected on his first attempt, which is an honor only eighty-nine of the 371 NFL Hall of Famers can claim.3 Brady will presumptively do the same upon his first eligibility in 2028.

From the infrastructure and systems that manage and support permanent changes of station1 to our homeland’s defense against the increasing threat of small unmanned aircraft systems,2 commercial contracts play a critical role in supporting Department of Defense (DoD) missions. When nonconformance, delays, or other issues arise, the attorneys who advise contracting officers must be confidently ready to advise on the Government’s options and the steps required to take certain actions.

You can’t always get what you want

But if you try sometimes

You just might find

You get what you need1

I still remember what my commander said during the unit hail:

He stood up, looked around the room with an annoyed expression, glanced down at his index card, and said,

“I can’t believe we have one lawyer, let alone two.”

Then he sat down. No handshake. No welcome. Just a clear message: I was not trusted, and I was not needed.

I was the new deputy command judge advocate for a special operations unit. I had completed a successful first tour in the 82nd Airborne Division, but I was still new to the special operations community, and to them I was unproven.