Governor's Column by Dave Heineman

August 7, 2009

Dear Fellow Nebraskans:

Today I want to introduce you to Col. Judd Lyons, the Nebraska National Guard’s next Adjutant General.

In a few weeks our current Adjutant General, Maj. Gen. Tim Kadavy, will become Deputy Director of the Army National Guard at the Bureau Headquarters in Arlington, Va. He has been an outstanding leader for the Nebraska National Guard. It’s clear his talents have been recognized at the federal level and we wish him the best as he prepares for this new responsibility.

Col. Lyons will be promoted to brigadier general and receive command of the Nebraska National Guard from Kadavy during a ceremony on Sunday, Aug. 23. He has served more than 29 years with the Nebraska National Guard. He has held numerous command and staff positions. He will lead the more than 4,800 Air and Army personnel making up the Nebraska National Guard.

In addition to commanding Nebraska’s military forces, he will serve as a member of my cabinet and as director of the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency, working with the state’s civilian emergency preparedness and disaster response personnel.

Col. Lyons recently became the director of the joint staff where he is responsible for budget, personnel management, training, and equipment for the Nebraska National Guard. His experience also includes commanding forces, first as a Captain and a Lt. Colonel, and now twice as a Colonel. He led a team training the Afghan National Army and police forces two years ago. Currently he serves as commander of the Guard’s 92nd Troop Command.

Col. Lyon’s military training started before he enlisted with the Guard in 1980 when he attended high school at Missouri Military Academy. He attended Officer Candidate School at Camp Ashland and was commissioned as an infantry second lieutenant in 1983. His first assignment was serving as a battalion assistant operations officer with the 1-134th Infantry in Omaha.

Since then, he has spent a significant part of his military career at the Nebraska Army National Guard headquarters planning unit mobilizations, managing recruiting efforts, commanding the Guard’s training facilities, and serving as the Army Guard’s human resources officer.

In 2005, he became the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, coordinated the deployment of Nebraska Guard personnel activated to assist with recovery efforts in the Gulf Coast.

Col. Lyons is familiar with the challenges our soldiers and airmen face during active duty deployments. In 2006, he deployed to northern Afghanistan to serve as commander of the 209th Regional Security Assistance Command, which was responsible for training and equipping members of the Afghan National Army and national police forces.

He understands the deployment challenges our Guard personnel face, and he cares about our military families. His wife, Lt. Col. Amy Lyons, is a JAG officer with the Nebraska National Guard and has deployed to Macedonia and Iraq. Judd and Amy have three sons, two of whom now serve in the National Guard. As parents, they have confronted some of the same challenges of other Guard families when their oldest son deployed to Iraq with Nebraska’s 267th Maintenance Company.

Col. Lyons has demonstrated that he has the ability and the experience to be the next leader of the Nebraska National Guard. I know he will be an outstanding Adjutant General, and I look forward to working with him.