Governor Abbott Names New General Counsel, Principal Deputy
Governor Greg Abbott today named James P. Sullivan as General Counsel to the Governor and promoted Angela Colmenero to Principal Deputy General Counsel. Jeff Oldham, who began serving as General Counsel in July 2018, announced earlier this summer that he will be returning to private appellate practice in December 2021. Sullivan and Colmenero previously served as Deputies under Oldham.
"Jeff Oldham faithfully served the people of Texas with integrity throughout his time as General Counsel, and I thank him for his service to the state of Texas over the past several years," said Governor Abbott. "James Sullivan is the perfect fit to succeed Jeff, bringing to this role a keen legal eye and an abiding fidelity to the Constitution. He and Angela Colmenero, with her deep understanding of state government, will ensure continuity in the legal expertise that I expect from the General Counsel’s office. I thank James and Angela for taking on this tremendous responsibility and look forward to working with them as we serve all Texans."
James P. Sullivan has served as Deputy General Counsel to the Governor, as Assistant Solicitor General of Texas, and as a law clerk to Judge Thomas B. Griffith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, in addition to stints as an adjunct professor at George Mason University and an appellate litigator in private practice. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where he was Articles Editor of the Harvard Law Review, and of Rice University.
Angela Colmenero has served as Deputy General Counsel to the Governor since September 2018. Prior to this role, she served in various leadership positions for nearly a decade at the Texas Attorney General’s Office, including as Chief of the General Litigation Division and Deputy Chief of the Special Litigation Division. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame Law School and the University of Texas at Austin.