James Crabtree leads the Government Relations Section at the Texas Veterans Commission and serves as the agency’s primary point of contact for lawmakers, their staff, and external stakeholders, such as the Office of the Governor and the Legislative Budget Board. He also leads the development of the agency’s strategic plan and legislative appropriations request.
Crabtree is a United States Marine who completed basic training in 1997. He served for three years as an 81 mm mortarman and was commissioned in 2000 after graduating from OCS and the University of Texas. He deployed to Al-Anbar, Iraq in 2004-2005 with a Marine infantry battalion. He now serves in the Marine Corps Reserve and was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 2019. He is a graduate of the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Warfare School and the Command and Staff College.
Prior to joining the Texas Veterans Commission, Crabtree was the director of the Veteran Affairs & Border Security Committee in the Texas Senate from 2016 to 2021. Before that he worked for 12 years in a variety of roles with the Texas Veterans Land Board. Crabtree is married and he and his wife Meredith (whom he met as a pen-pal while deployed to Iraq) reside in the Liberty Hill, Texas area and have four children and a rescue lab. His hobbies and interests consist of baseball, politics, history, reading, running, and the Indianapolis 500.