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| Honorable Charles L. Young, III |
| General Counsel |
| Headquarters, Department of the Army Washington, D.C. |
HON Charles Young, III, currently serves as the General Counsel of the Army. He assumed this position on 22 December 2025.
Mr. Young previously served as the Principal Deputy General Counsel of the Department of War. Mr. Young served as the Chief Legal Officer of the Department and the Principal Legal Advisor to the Secretary of Defense (War). Mr. Young was responsible for all legal determinations and legal policies across the Department of Defense and its components. He also served as the Acting Director of the Defense Legal Services Agency, which is comprised of attorneys and staff members that are assigned to the Department of Defense Agencies and its field activities.
Prior to that he served as the General Counsel of the National Guard Bureau. Where he was the principal legal advisor to the Chief, National Guard Bureau, Vice Chief, National Guard Bureau, and the Directors of the Army and Air National Guard in issues pertaining to the utilization and administration of over 436,000 National Guard members. He also served as their representative to officials throughout the Executive and Legislative branches of the Federal Government including the Department of Defense, Department of the Army, Department of the Air Force, and the Judge Advocates General.
Previously, Mr. Young served as Chief of the National Guard Bureau’s Litigation and Employment Law Division. In that position, he defended the National Guard’s interests in all aspects of Department of Defense and National Guard operations and policies worldwide. He served as the National Guard’s legal subject matter expert on issues across the spectrum of National Guard matters, such as, Constitutional issues, statutory and regulatory authorities
involved in the funding, organization, discipline, and the utilization of the National Guard. The National Guard as a reserve component; the organization, functions, and relational authorities of the National Guard Bureau; the National Guard Technician Program; and the Active-Guard Reserve Program.
Mr. Young was originally commissioned into the United States Army, in 1989, in the Aviation branch, and served as an AH-64, Apache attack helicopter pilot, and platoon leader. He was selected to attend law school at the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William and Mary under the Army’s Funded Legal Education Program. He continued to serve as an active-duty Army Judge Advocate, until April 2005, when he transferred to the West Virginia Air National Guard, and accepted an active-duty position in the Office of the Chief Counsel, National Guard Bureau (NGB). Since starting at NGB, Mr. Young has served as an administrative law attorney; litigation attorney; deployed in response to numerous hurricanes to include hurricane Katrina relief duties; deployed to Iraq to work Rule of Law issues for Multi-National Forces-Iraq; and assisted in the deployments for numerous border security missions. He retired from the U.S. Army, in 2009, and since retiring has served as an Air Force civilian attorney. He is married, has two daughters, and a son, who is a Captain, in the Army’s Aviation Branch, as an AH-64(E) pilot.
