The Honorable Brad R. Carson served as the 31st Under Secretary of the Army, and Chief Management Officer (CMO) of the Army.

Carson served as the 20th General Counsel of the Department of the Army. In that capacity he was the primary legal advisor to the Secretary of the Army and served as Army's chief legal officer. In addition, he was the Army’s designated agency ethics official and was responsible for management and oversight of the worldwide Army Ethics Program.

Carson attended Jenks High School in Jenks, Okla., and Baylor University, where he graduated with honors and was selected as a Rhodes Scholar. While studying at Trinity College, the University of Oxford, he earned a Bachelor of Arts/Master of Arts in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics, and, in 1994, received his law degree from the University of Oklahoma College of Law, where he was recognized as the outstanding graduate.

Since his graduation from law school, Carson has held a variety of professional positions in both the private and public sectors. Before entering politics, he practiced commercial law at Crowe & Dunlevy, P.C., the largest law firm in Oklahoma. In 2000, he represented the 2nd District of Oklahoma in the U.S. House of Representatives. After leaving office in 2004, Carson was a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and, later, chief executive officer of Cherokee Nation Businesses, L.L.C.

From 2009 to 2010, Carson served on active military duty as a U.S. Navy officer deployed to Iraq, embedded with the U.S. Army’s 84th Explosive Ordnance Disposal, or EOD, Battalion. He was awarded the Bronze Star for his service as an intelligence officer working with EOD teams at seven bases investigating bomb sites, caches, smuggling routes and other activities related to improvised explosive devices.

Carson also served as a professor of business law at the University of Tulsa, where he had a joint appointment in its College of Law and the College of Business and served as the director of the National Energy Policy Institute there. He has also been a contributor to the Weekly Standard, Blueprint, The New Republic, and Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.

Carson is married with one child and is an enrolled tribal member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.