Tom Herthel serves as of counsel to the National Veterans Legal Service Program, advising the executive director on matters relating to strategic partnership development.
Herthel also serves as an adjunct professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law, where he teaches veterans law. Additionally, Herthel teaches military law, veterans law and coaches the National Veterans Law Moot Court teams (national winners in 2022 and 2024) at the University of Richmond Law School.
Before joining NVLSP in 2022, Herthel served as a deputy commissioner of the Virginia Department of Veterans Services. In that capacity, he was responsible for leading the Agency’s Benefit Services, Virginia Veteran and Family Support and Cemeteries service lines. Herthel joined the Virginia Department of Veterans Services as the benefits director in 2014.
Immediately before joining the Department of Veterans Services, Herthel served as the director of the Air Force General Counsel’s office in Europe, where he led a team responsible for providing legal support to the U.S. Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as well as for negotiating defense agreements throughout Europe. Herthel retired from the military in 2012, having served a total of 26 years as an Air Force judge advocate and Army military intelligence officer. He is a combat veteran.
Herthel attended the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in political science in 1989. He attended Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law, graduating with a J.D. in 1995. Herthel also earned an LL.M. in military law from the Army’s Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School in Charlottesville in 2001, and a certificate in military and veterans’ health, policy and advocacy from William & Mary Law School in 2017. He is admitted to practice law before the Supreme Court of the United States, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and the Supreme Court of Alabama.