Partner | Defense Consulting, Government Investigations, Regulatory Compliance, and Crisis Management
Leadership Training & Executive Leadership Coaching
Lieutenant General, U.S. Army (Retired)
Lieutenant General (Retired) Stuart W. Risch served as the 41st Judge Advocate General of the United States Army—the Army’s highest-ranking uniformed lawyer and principal military legal adviser to the Secretary of the Army and the Army Chief of Staff.
Appointed by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate, Stuart led the Army’s worldwide legal organization of approximately 10,000 military and civilian professionals supporting a global force of nearly one million people.
Before becoming Judge Advocate General, Stuart served in four successive general-officer assignments that reflect the extraordinary breadth of his experience. As Assistant Judge Advocate General for Military Law and Operations, he exercised senior oversight across critical areas of military law and legal operations for the Army Staff in the Pentagon. As Commanding General of The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School, he served in the president-equivalent role for the federal government’s only American Bar Association-accredited law school, overseeing the education and professional development of Army lawyers and legal personnel and training provided to investigators, commanders, and other military leaders.
Stuart subsequently served as Commanding General of the U.S. Army Legal Services Agency and Chief Judge of the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals. In those roles, he directed the Army’s specialized litigation and judicial functions and presided over appellate panels reviewing court-martial convictions, sentences, alleged legal errors, and the sufficiency of military criminal proceedings. He then served for four years as Deputy Judge Advocate General—the Army’s second-highest-ranking uniformed lawyer—helping lead and manage the Judge Advocate General’s Corps before being selected to lead it.
When the Army’s most consequential legal matters reached its highest civilian and military leaders, Stuart was responsible for providing—and overseeing—the legal advice on which critical decisions were made.
Now a Partner at National Security Law Firm, Stuart brings that extraordinary experience to complex military, national-security, government-investigation, crisis-management, regulatory-compliance, and strategic-risk matters in which a client’s career, liberty, reputation, business, or future may be at stake.
The Army’s Senior Uniformed Lawyer
Stuart culminated 43 years in uniform, including 36 years on active duty as an Army lawyer, as the senior leader of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps.
As Judge Advocate General, he directed the delivery of legal services throughout the active Army, Army Reserve, and Army National Guard. His responsibilities extended across military justice, government and internal investigations, national security, operational law, federal litigation, congressional matters, government contracts, fiscal law, administrative law, ethics, personnel actions, institutional accountability, regulatory compliance, risk mitigation, and crisis response.
Stuart managed an annual legal budget exceeding $120 million and oversaw the Army’s defense, in coordination with the Department of Justice, in hundreds of lawsuits seeking more than $1 billion in damages. He also oversaw The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School in his capacity as Judge Advocate General and established the U.S. Army Advocacy Center to provide advanced litigation and advocacy training throughout the Department of Defense.
Few attorneys in private practice have experienced military and government decision-making from such a senior vantage point. Stuart has served as a felony prosecutor, chief prosecutor, criminal-law professor, government litigator, legislative counsel on Capitol Hill, Assistant Judge Advocate General, law-school commander, appellate chief judge, commanding general, Deputy Judge Advocate General, Judge Advocate General of the United States Army, and the senior-partner equivalent of one of the nation’s largest, busiest, and most consequential law firms.
He has not merely practiced within the military legal system. He has examined it from nearly every level and ultimately led it.
Military Justice and High-Stakes Investigations
Stuart’s experience spans the full military justice process—from investigation and prosecution through trial, appellate review, institutional oversight, and policy development.
As a prosecutor and chief prosecutor, he personally tried more than 125 felony cases. He later served as a professor of criminal law and editor of the Military Law Review.
As a general officer, Stuart served as Commanding General of the U.S. Army Legal Services Agency and Chief Judge of the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals. He presided over appellate panels reviewing court-martial convictions, sentences, alleged legal errors, and the sufficiency of military criminal proceedings. He also oversaw specialized legal functions involving military appellate litigation, federal civil litigation, the Army Trial Judiciary, contract and fiscal law, regulatory and intellectual-property law, and environmental law.
Throughout his career, Stuart conducted, supervised, or reviewed hundreds of sensitive investigations. These included criminal and civil investigations, command-directed and administrative investigations, death and mishap investigations, procurement-fraud matters, leadership and ethics investigations, organizational and command-climate reviews, and matters involving significant congressional, executive-branch, public, and media scrutiny.
For example, Stuart was extensively involved in more than 30 investigations arising from the mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, committed by an active-duty Army major. He also supervised the four-year capital court-martial that followed.
He was closely involved in the congressionally mandated independent review following the death of a young female enlisted Soldier at Fort Hood, including the broader examination of command climate, sexual harassment, leadership accountability, and conditions at the installation. He also worked extensively on investigations concerning the Army’s oversight of privatized housing at Army and joint installations.
These matters required far more than determining whether an allegation could be substantiated. They demanded careful consideration of investigative integrity, due process, leadership responsibility, institutional risk, congressional oversight, public confidence, corrective action, and the lasting consequences of the official record.
That experience gives Stuart an exceptional understanding of how allegations become evidence, how investigative findings move through a chain of command, how senior officials evaluate credibility and risk, and how a decision in one proceeding can affect military status, promotion, retirement, security-clearance eligibility, criminal exposure, or professional reputation.
Congressional, National Security and Federal Matters
Stuart has substantial experience working with Congress and preparing senior government leaders for congressional scrutiny.
He served as legislative counsel in the Army’s Office of the Chief Legislative Liaison, working in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. He later prepared senior Army leaders for congressional testimony, communicated with congressional professional staff, and helped navigate matters involving the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, the Intelligence Committees, and many other congressional oversight committees.
Stuart understands that congressional scrutiny rarely exists in isolation. Testimony, documents, and public statements may affect a parallel investigation, criminal proceeding, personnel action, security determination, government contract, civil lawsuit, or public narrative. Each part of the response must therefore be accurate, defensible, and coordinated with what may follow.
His principal areas of military expertise include criminal law and operational law, including international law and national-security law. His military service included deployments to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq in support of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation New Dawn. He also led the Army’s Center for Law and Military Operations, a think tank that conducted multiple after-action reviews of legal operations in a variety of conflicts and exercises.
Before joining National Security Law Firm, Stuart was a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Shook, Hardy & Bacon, where he practiced in the firm’s Business Litigation and Government Investigations and White Collar groups. He advised executives and organizations on internal investigations, institutional risk, crisis response, ethics, leadership, and strategic decision-making.
Strategic Risk, Crisis Management and Regulatory Compliance
Stuart advises individuals, executives, government contractors, law firms, corporate legal departments, and other organizations confronting events that create overlapping legal, operational, regulatory, reputational, and institutional risks.
His experience is particularly valuable when an organization must respond before all of the facts are known and when decisions made at the beginning of a matter may affect investigations, litigation, government relationships, regulatory exposure, public confidence, or the organization’s long-term position.
Stuart assists clients with:
- Government and internal investigations
- Crisis management and coordinated response
- Regulatory-compliance strategy and reviews
- Institutional risk assessments
- Risk-mitigation planning
- Leadership, ethics, and organizational-culture concerns
- Government-contractor and federal-agency matters
- Congressional inquiries and witness preparation
- Strategic communications concerning legal and investigative matters
- Independent reviews of significant incidents or institutional failures
- Development and coordination of multidisciplinary legal teams
- Executive decision-making in high-pressure environments
He understands that effective crisis management requires more than responding to the most immediate legal question. It requires identifying who may examine the same facts next, which additional proceedings may follow, what information is being preserved, how the organization’s actions will be evaluated, and whether the response taken today will remain defensible months or years later.
Senior Strategic Counsel at National Security Law Firm
At National Security Law Firm, Stuart provides senior strategic counsel in complex military, national-security, government-investigation, administrative, regulatory, crisis-management, and strategic-risk matters.
His experience is particularly valuable when a single allegation or event creates several interconnected risks. A military investigation may simultaneously jeopardize a client’s command, promotion, retirement, security clearance, liberty, and reputation. A matter involving a government contractor may lead to an internal investigation, Inspector General inquiry, criminal referral, suspension or debarment proceeding, facility-clearance concern, congressional inquiry, regulatory review, federal lawsuit, or public crisis.
In these matters, it is not enough to respond to the first notice or defend against the most immediate allegation. Effective representation requires understanding how the government is developing the record, who may review it next, what additional proceedings may follow, and how a decision made in one forum could affect every other part of the matter.
Stuart works with National Security Law Firm’s military-defense, security-clearance, federal-employment, government-contracts, white-collar, regulatory, and appellate attorneys to identify those risks and develop a coordinated strategy for the complete matter—not merely the first proceeding to arise.
The value of his experience is judgment: judgment developed through decades of responsibility for how the Army’s most difficult legal, investigative, operational, regulatory, and institutional matters were reviewed, managed, litigated, and decided.
Leadership, Mentorship and Executive Coaching
Stuart also provides executive leadership coaching and develops customized leadership and mentorship programs for law firms, corporate legal departments, businesses, executives, and other organizations. His work draws on more than four decades of leading and developing people at every level—from teams of one or two individuals to a worldwide legal organization of more than 10,000 professionals.
Through individual executive coaching, mentoring, interactive presentations, case studies, and multi-level training programs, Stuart helps leaders understand their own leadership styles, adapt to what their organizations and people require, build effective teams, develop future leaders, and navigate difficult legal, ethical, and institutional decisions.
His signature program, Leadership on the High Ground, emphasizes the principles necessary to lead with confidence, clarity, integrity, and accountability—particularly in high-pressure environments. Stuart’s programs can be tailored to the needs of an individual executive, leadership team, law firm, corporate legal department, or organization.
Learn more about Stuart’s leadership/mentorship training and executive leadership coaching by contacting Stuart at srisch@
Teaching, Professional Leadership and Service
Stuart serves as a Professorial Lecturer in Law at The George Washington University Law School, where he has taught the law of armed conflict and nation building. He is a frequent speaker and writer on military law, national security, operational law, legal ethics, advocacy, professional responsibility, leadership, and mentorship.
He also serves as Secretary and Board Member of the Board of Visitors of Seton Hall University School of Law, and as a Strategic Advisor to Legal Innovators. His service reflects his longstanding commitment to legal education, professional development, mentorship, institutional leadership, and Veteran Causes.
His honors include the Army Distinguished Service Medal, multiple awards of the Legion of Merit and Bronze Star Medal, the American Bar Association’s Military Lawyer of the Year Award, the 2025 Seton Hall University School of Law Alumni Public Servant Award, and an honorary doctorate from Lafayette College. He is also among a select group of individuals to receive the Order of Aaron and Hur from the United States Army Chaplain Corps.
Jurisdictions Admitted: New Jersey; Supreme Court of the United States; U.S. Court of Federal Claims; U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces; U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals; and numerous other federal district and military courts. Represents clients nationwide in federal and military matters where permitted.
Education: J.D., Seton Hall University School of Law; LL.M. with a concentration in Environmental Law, The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School; Master of Strategic Studies, U.S. Army War College; B.A., Lafayette College.