Lamontagne Nominated for Vice Chief, Guardsman for Top JAG, New ANG Director Picked

Gen. John D. Lamontagne has been nominated by President Donald Trump to become Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force, a job that has been vacant since February.

Lamontagne would bring airlifter expertise to the Air Force’s No. 2 role after spending the past 15 months as perhaps the last four-star head of Air Mobility Command.

The president also nominated Brig. Gen. Christopher A. Eason, currently commander of the Oklahoma Air National Guard, to be Judge Advocate General of the Air Force, the top JAG, or TJAG, for USAF and the Space Force. In civilian life, Eason has served as a senior federal prosecutor at the Department of Justice.

A new director of the Air National Guard was also selected. The Adjutant General of Texas Maj. Gen. Thomas M. Suelzer was picked for the three-star position as the ANG’s leader.

The White House sent all three nominations to the Senate for confirmation Dec. 15, according to congressional notices. How quickly the Senate might act is unclear.

Both the Vice and TJAG jobs have been vacant since Feb. 21, when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James C. Slife and Judge Advocate General of the Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Plummer, along with the top lawyer for the Army, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti.

The top lawyer for the Air Force has been a three-star position for the last two decades, but the Pentagon is downgrading the Air Force’s TJAG to a two-star job, as it has with the other services. Eason is being nominated to serve as the service’s top lawyer at the rank of major general, not lieutenant general, according to an Air Force official and the congressional notice. New Army and Navy TJAGs were installed over the summer after Senate confirmation, and both are two-star generals—Army Maj. Gen. Bobby L. Christine and Marine Corps Maj. Gen. David J. Bligh. Their Senate-confirmed predecessors were three-star officers.

Air Force Director of Staff Lt. Gen. Scott L. Pleus has acted as Vice Chief of Staff for the past nine months. Lamontagne is the second general nominated to be Vice Chief. Then-commander of Air Force Global Strike Command Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere was nominated in July, but after Gen. David W. Allvin announced his retirement in August, Bussiere’s nomination was withdrawn without explanation in September. He announced his intention to retire later that month. Bussiere praised Lamontange as the nominee to become the next VCSAF.

“Johnny Lamontange is an outstanding leader and I have the utmost respect for him and believe our Air Force will benefit greatly from his service as the Vice Chief,” Bussiere told Air & Space Forces Magazine Dec. 16.

Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach succeeded Allvin as Air Force Chief of Staff in November.

With Lamontagne promotion, the Air Force will once again have two former Major Command bosses in its top jobs, which was not the case during Allvin’s tenure.

Wilsbach led Air Combat Command and Pacific Air Forces before becoming CSAF, and Lamontagne leads Air Mobility Command and previously was the deputy commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa. 

Lamontagne had become the favorite to be nominated as the next VCSAF, according to people familiar with the matter.

Lamontagne is a career mobility pilot with more than 4,000 flight hours, according to his official Air Force biography, and he has commanded at the squadron, group, and wing level, along with time as the director of AMC’s 618th Air Operations Center. He also served in joint roles as deputy director for Strategic Plans and Policy on Joint Staff, known as the J-5, and the Chief of Staff for U.S. European Command.

Eason has served as a military prosecutor and a staff judge advocate general, including for special operations units, as well as being a civilian prosecutor, according to his official military biography.

Maj. Gen. Duke A. Pirak, the deputy director of the ANG, has been the acting director of the Air National Guard for over a year and a half since Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh retired in the summer of 2024. Pirak was nominated by former President Joe Biden to succeed Loh in March 2024, but the Senate did not act before the end of the chamber’s session, and his nomination expired this past January. Pirak was not renominated by Trump to serve as the permanent ANG director; Suelzer has now been nominated instead.

Early this month, Wilsbach and Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink said they would discard more than half of the so-called “re-optimization” changes planned by Allvin and Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, which were initially announced under the Biden administration. Some of those changes faced pushback from the heads of Major Commands. 

If confirmed, Lamontagne will back Wilsbach in guiding the service through his tenure as Chief, during which he has so far emphasized readiness and standards.

Lamontagne would also serve on the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) alongside other Vice Chiefs, which is led by the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Corps Gen. Christopher J. Mahoney. The board plays an important role in determining the Pentagon’s budget, which is particularly important for the Air Force as it attempts to field—and fund—the F-47 Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter, the B-21 Raider stealth bomber, Collaborative Combat Aircraft, and the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program—just a few of the service’s high-priority programs.