Guest of Honor and Speaker

The Honorable James H. Webb, Jr., has been a combat Marine, committee counsel in Congress, Assistant Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the Navy, U.S. Senator from Virginia, Emmy-award winning journalist, filmmaker and author of 10 books.

Webb graduated from the Naval Academy in 1968, one of 18 midshipmen to receive a special commendation for “outstanding leadership contributions,” and was the Honor Graduate, first in his class of 243 lieutenants, at Marine Corps Officer’s Basic School. One of the most highly decorated Marines of the Vietnam War, at age 23 as a rifle platoon and company commander in Vietnam he was awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star Medal, two Bronze Star Medals with combat “V” and two Purple Hearts, and was the most highly decorated member of the Naval Academy’s historic class of 1968.

Webb graduated from Georgetown University Law Center in 1975, receiving the Horan Award for excellence in legal writing, then became the first Vietnam veteran to serve as a full committee counsel in the US Congress, serving from 1977 to 1981 as assistant minority counsel and then full counsel to the House Committee on Veterans Affairs. In 1982, he led the fight to include an African-American soldier in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Appointed by President Ronald Reagan, Webb was the first-ever Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs in 1984, and in 1987 the first Naval Academy graduate in history to serve in the military and become Secretary of the Navy. At the Pentagon, he also was a member of the Armed Forces Policy Council and the Defense Resources Board. He was a fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics in 1992.

Webb served six years representing Virginia in the United States Senate. While in the Senate, in 2007 Webb delivered the response to the President’s State of the Union address, and served on the Foreign Relations, Armed Services, Veterans Affairs, and Joint Economic committees, including four years as Chairman of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel, and of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs. He wrote and guided to passage the Post-9/11 GI Bill, the most significant veterans’ legislation since World War II. Despite strong opposition by the Bush Administration and Republican leaders, Webb conceived and implemented a bipartisan approach and accomplished the passage of this landmark legislation in only sixteen months. He also was the leading voice in the United States Congress on behalf of reforming America’s broken criminal justice system, and co-authored legislation which exposed $60 billion of waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan wartime-support contracts.