Jimmy Paul, Esq.

Jimmy often says that what's understood does not need to be explained. Nowhere is that truer than in his own career.

He is a 23-year U.S. Army veteran of Operations Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom, and Inherent Resolve. He began his career as a Private (E-1), rose through the noncommissioned ranks to E-8, then commissioned into the Judge Advocate General's Corps and retired as a Major, after 13 years enlisted and 10 as a JAG. He has seen the Army from both ends of the rank structure, and it shapes how he reads a case file.

As a prosecutor, he tried the first court-martial held in Iraq in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, in austere conditions, and secured a conviction. He ended his prosecutorial career having never lost a contested court-martial. He credits his success to the preparation and long hours that were instilled in him as a paratrooper rather than anything else.

He went on to lead a Civil Litigation Division at Fort Hood defending the United States against Federal Tort Claims Act suits, and a general practice office at Fort Bragg handling estate planning, family law, immigration, contracts, and landlord-tenant matters. Both were named best office of their kind by the Army Chief of Staff. The Fort Bragg office had not won in the seven years before he arrived, and has not won since he left.

There is little in the JAG Corps he did not practice: military justice, administrative law, national security law, contract law, fiscal law, and general civil practice. He advised commanders from brigade all the way up to a combatant command. He was decorated at every assignment, and he holds an LL.M. with a concentration in Federal Contract Law.

Today, he represents the community he came from: service members and veterans facing proceedings that can end a career, without a large firm behind them. Building MJ Law Group with Mary Samarkos was the choice to organize his career around that mission, not around a paycheck.