John is the General Counsel at the Texas Veterans Commission where he provides legal advice on a myriad of issues facing Texas Veterans and their families. He previously ran the Department of Defense’s largest client services office at Fort Hood, Texas where he supervised 18 attorneys and 10 paralegals who worked entirely on tax, estate planning and retirement considerations for more than 5,000 clients. He was then selected to teach these areas of law to military and civilian attorneys at the federal government’s only law school accredited by the American Bar Association (The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School in Charlottesville, Virginia). As a practitioner and law professor, he helped provide insight to Congress on the drafting and execution of the military’s new Blended Retirement System.
John Goodell is the General Counsel for the Texas Veterans Commission and previously served for 14 years on Active Duty in the Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG).
John also worked in other assignments, including a year deployment to Afghanistan as a legal advisor to America’s special operations units and most recently as the first General Counsel to the Army’s Artificial Intelligence Center at Army Futures Command in Austin, Texas.
He earned his B.A. from Vanderbilt University and his J.D. from the University of Wisconsin.
Personal
John Goodell is a people person. He loves getting to know people from various walks of life. He is married to his high school sweetheart, Cara. They have three children whom they adopted from Medellín, Colombia and a motley crew of rescue dogs. He loves sports – especially the Wisconsin Badgers, Vanderbilt Commodores, and Newcastle United – and is an early and excited fan of the coming Austin FC team. He is a Texan by choice rather than birth, as he and his wife jumped at the chance to return after enjoying life in Central Texas (Belton) while he was stationed at Ft. Hood. He and his family are thrilled to make the Austin area home.
Mission statement: Life is about serving others.