Army appoints Bagwell as JAG school dean 
Col. Randy Bagwell, a 1987 graduate of Henderson State University, has been appointed as the next dean at the U.S. Army’s Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) School in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Bagwell currently serves as the staff judge advocate at Joint Base Lewis-McChord and I Corps where he supervises a legal office of around 200 lawyers and paralegals. He will start his new job in June.
The JAG School is the military’s only American Bar Association certified law school. It offers three basic course classes a year that new lawyers entering the Army attend for 12 weeks to learn military law.
Bagwell said he has worked in more than 70 countries during his military duty.
“I have spent much of my career working International Law for the Army. I even worked out of embassies in many of the countries where we handled human rights and rule of law issues,” Bagwell said.
He recently served a fellowship with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in Washington D.C. where he worked intelligence law issues in the office of the general counsel. He also taught international law at the Naval War College after receiving his master’s degree there.
Bagwell said he was involved with ROTC during his first two years at Henderson where he received his B.A. degree in business administration. He dropped ROTC to focus on other areas to prepare for law school.
“When I did that, I switched from the Army Reserves to the Arkansas National Guard,” Bagwell said. “I attended the state Officer Candidate School at Camp Robinson and was commissioned there as a second lieutenant in the infantry with the National Guard.”
Bagwell, an Arkadelphia native, had enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve as a private when he was 17.
He credits Henderson for much of his success.
“I think the one thing that helped the most was the small class size and personal attention the professors were able to give the students,” he said. “I not only learned the subjects, they helped me learn to be a good student. This paid off huge in law school.
“It also helped that Henderson was a great economic value. For anyone planning to attend graduate school or law school, I recommend looking at the economic value of Henderson (for an undergraduate degree). It is a wonderful school to get a great education and get you to the next level.”
Bagwell earned his juris doctor degree from the University of Arkansas in 1990 and was accepted as a member of the Arkansas Bar in 1991. He was admitted to the Texas Bar in 2000. Bagwell is also admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, the Army Court of Appeals, and the Arkansas Supreme Court.
Bagwell holds a Masters of Law degree in military law from the Army’s Judge Advocate General’s School and a Masters of Arts degree in national policy and strategic studies from Command and Naval Staff College.
His brother, Brian Bagwell, works at Henderson as a computer support technician in Huie Library.