Much like the university where it’s made its home, the United States Army Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School can trace its roots back to America’s Founding Fathers. At the request of George Washington in 1775, the Continental Congress appointed the army’s first lawyer, known as a judge advocate general.

Judge advocates – or “JAGs,” as they are more commonly known – have been an integral part of the Army ever since, but it wasn’t until World War II that the Army recognized the need to offer a specialized training course for the attorneys in the JAG Corps. A temporary school began operation in the 1940s, but by the time the Korean War began, the government was searching for a more permanent home for JAG education.

The University of Virginia proved the perfect fit for the Army’s needs and so began a 66-year relationship that has fostered decades of shared teaching and student mentoring by some of the country’s most prominent legal minds.