Two Civilian Military Law Practices That Defend Service Members Under the UCMJ
Service members facing a court-martial, nonjudicial punishment, or an administrative board may hire civilian counsel in addition to detailed military defense counsel. Two practices that work in that field are Joseph L. Jordan, Attorney at Law, in Texas, and Crisp and Associates Military Law, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. What follows is drawn from each practice’s own website, read on 17 September 2026. Figures and credentials are as the practices publish them. This is a description, not legal advice and not a recommendation.
Joseph L. Jordan, Attorney at Law
The practice
Joseph L. Jordan founded the practice in 2011 with one focus: representing service members under investigation, facing charges, or fighting to keep their careers. The practice is based in Texas, with staff operating out of Killeen and work handled across the country and overseas. Alongside Mr. Jordan there are two attorneys serving Of Counsel, a senior paralegal, and an office manager. The site states that cases are tried at installations in the United States, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, and that he travels to the case: “When a service member’s career, freedom, and future are at stake, Jordan gets on a plane.”
Almost all of the work is military justice. One service line reaches beyond it: defense in federal civilian employment matters and before the Merit Systems Protection Board.
Joseph L. Jordan
Twenty years of practice, all of it military law. In his own framing: “Not part-time. Not alongside a civilian caseload. Every case, every client, every courtroom has been military.”
Before private practice he served in the Army. He enlisted first, was commissioned as a combat arms officer, and served as an Army JAG prosecutor in Texas and with the 2nd Infantry Division in South Korea. He deployed with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, and served in Germany, Korea, Kuwait, and the continental United States. Within the JAG Corps his roles covered legal assistance, claims, operational law, and administrative law.
Education: J.D., University of Arkansas at Little Rock; B.S. in Justice Studies, Pittsburg State University, where he completed ROTC. Bar admission: Arkansas.
Published record: more than 1,000 service members represented and 250 or more cases taken to verdict, across the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Space Force. Article 120 sexual assault defense is described as the largest category of the trial practice, with 181 sexual assault courts-martial tried, 22 child sexual assault trials that produced 14 full acquittals and 3 dismissals before trial, more than 15 multi-victim cases tried, and 2 separate nine-victim cases taken to verdict and reported as full acquittals. The site recounts one child sexual assault case in which the accused did not appear for trial and the case was tried to an acquittal in his absence. Media appearances listed include Fox News, ABC News, Anderson Cooper, and The Wall Street Journal. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.
The rest of the team
Nicholas C. DauSchmidt, Attorney at Law, Of Counsel, based in Vicenza, Italy. A former judge advocate with more than twelve years as a military attorney in uniform, and a former defense counsel, special victims counsel, and prosecutor. He joined the group in 2025, and the site describes the Italy presence as the first of its kind there, bringing a network of private investigators and European licensed attorneys. He defends service members worldwide, not only in Europe.
Justin Scheider, Attorney at Law, Of Counsel, based in Little Rock, Arkansas, a general practitioner. He served an eight-year enlistment as an infantryman in the Marine Corps Reserve and serves in the Air Force Reserve as a communications chief, with seventeen years of total service.
Tasha Carnahan, Senior Paralegal. Seven years as a U.S. Army paralegal, mostly supporting attorneys who advised commanders on military justice, with service at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, in Texas, and two combat tours in Iraq. Her awards listed include the Distinguished Service Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal, four Army Commendation Medals, a Joint Service Commendation Medal, and five Army Achievement Medals. She holds Army court reporter and paralegal schooling and a B.A. in Paralegal Studies, cum laude, from the College of Mount Saint Joseph.
Patti Vancil, Office Manager, a military family member with a decade of connection to military service.
What the practice handles
Charges, with a dedicated page for each: Article 120 rape, Article 120b sexual assault of a child, Article 120c other sexual misconduct, Article 128 assault, Article 128b domestic violence, manslaughter and attempted murder, larceny, drug crimes, drug use and military urinalysis cases, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, pandering, solicitation, adultery, and sodomy.
Procedure and consequences: Article 31 rights during questioning, Article 32 investigations, summary, special, and general courts-martial, nonjudicial punishment with a separate page for the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard, AR 15-6 investigations and guidelines, flight evaluation boards, separation boards, administrative separations for enlisted and officer personnel in the Army and Navy, and federal civilian employment and MSPB defense.
The site also carries an article-by-article reference section on the UCMJ, installation pages grouped by service branch (Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard), a military law podcast, a blog, a reviews page, and a case results page.
Getting in touch
Free and confidential consultation, described as available around the clock, with financing available. Intake is by telephone or web form, and the number published for consultations is +1 800-580-8034.
Crisp and Associates Military Law
The firm
Crisp and Associates Military Law is the military justice practice of Crisp & Associates, LLC, which Jonathan W. Crisp co-founded in 2007 after leaving active duty. It is veteran owned and operated, works from a main office at 4031 North Front Street #200, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 17110, and states that it will travel to any military installation at home or abroad. His page describes growth from a solo practice to six attorneys and twelve support staff; the site’s team pages carry biographies for five attorneys. The firm publishes a combined figure of more than one hundred years of military law experience across the team.
Jonathan W. Crisp
Admitted in Pennsylvania in 1998, the year he earned his J.D. at Widener University School of Law. He began as an Assistant Public Defender in the Centre County Public Defender’s Office from 1999 to 2000, then served in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps from 2000 to 2007.
His JAG career, as his page sets it out: Legal Assistance Attorney, then Chief of Legal Assistance at Patton Barracks in Heidelberg, Germany, where the legal assistance office received the Army Chief of Staff Award for Excellence in Legal Assistance for the first time in its thirty-year history. He then served as Defense Counsel in Ansbach, Germany, representing soldiers at administrative proceedings and courts-martial, and was selected as Senior Defense Counsel at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, where he also supervised and mentored other trial attorneys. Two of the cases in which he was requested by name involved charges of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and the death of a detainee during an interrogation. The JAG Corps then nominated him as the first Command Judge Advocate of the newly formed 20th SUPCOM, a general officer command, where he built its legal services from the ground up.
After active duty he joined the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, served fifteen years, and retired in November 2021 as a Lieutenant Colonel.
Published record: more than 210 jury or panel trials to verdict, with other matters resolved before litigation, dismissals and acquittals at trial and post-trial, and clients across the United States and abroad, including Kosovo and Iraq. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.
Admissions listed: Pennsylvania Supreme Court; Middle, Eastern, and Western District Courts of Pennsylvania; District Court of Colorado; U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia; Third Circuit Court of Appeals; Army, Air Force, and Navy-Marine Corps Courts of Criminal Appeals; Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces; Court of Federal Claims; United States Supreme Court. Practice areas listed alongside military justice: criminal defense, business law, and government contracts. Email: jcrisp@crisplegal.com.
The other attorneys
Donald Gordon joined the firm in early 2012. B.S. in Sports Management, Slippery Rock University; J.D., Widener University School of Law, during which he worked for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Office of Chief Counsel. After the bar exam he served as Legislative Counsel to the Pennsylvania Senate, researching and drafting legislation. His practice is now military justice across the branches, and the firm’s case results page credits him with discharge upgrade decisions. Email: dgordon@crisplegal.com.
Adam Leydig, admitted in Pennsylvania in 2021. B.A. in Legal Studies, Elizabethtown College, 2017; J.D., Syracuse University College of Law, 2020, with admission to the Order of the Barristers for trial advocacy. He spent two years as a student attorney in the Wohl Veterans Legal Clinic, working on VA benefits and discharge upgrades, clerked at the firm from 2018 to 2021, and has practiced there since 2021. Email: aleydig@crisplegal.com.
Jacob Gillette, admitted in Pennsylvania. B.A. in political science, summa cum laude, Slippery Rock University, 2020, with a 4.0 grade average and an internship with the Pennsylvania Senate Appropriations Committee; J.D., Widener Commonwealth Law School, 2023, where he received the General Carl E. Mundy Jr. and Linda Sloan Mundy Marine Scholarship. He has served more than seven and a half years in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard and is a First Lieutenant at Fort Indiantown Gap. He clerked at the firm for more than two years before joining as an attorney in 2023. Email: jgillette@crisplegal.com.
Blake Kollmann, admitted in New Jersey. B.A. in political science, Colorado State University, 2020; J.D., Widener Commonwealth Law School, 2024, on scholarship. He clerked at the firm for two and a half years, became Jonathan Crisp’s law clerk and later lead intern, and worked on case management, legal research, discharge upgrade petitions, administrative record corrections, rebuttals, and state court motions. He joined as an attorney in 2025. Email: bkollmann@crisplegal.com.
What the firm handles
Courts-martial, sexual assault charges, violent crimes, murder, drug crimes, positive urinalysis cases, nonjudicial punishment and Article 15 actions, command investigations, dealing with military criminal investigators, and Article 31(b) rights.
Career and post-conviction work sits beside the charge work: clemency, military discharge upgrades, qualitative management program separations, security clearance matters, and flight evaluation boards.
The site also carries a case results page, client reviews, military justice videos, a blog, an areas-served page, and an online payment option.
The published case results
The firm’s results page describes outcomes in narrative form. Among them: a two-star general officer accused of domestic violence, where the firm conducted its own investigation, cross-examined the government’s witnesses at the Article 32 preliminary hearing, and the hearing officer, a sitting military judge, recommended dismissal; all charges were dismissed and no administrative action followed. In another, all charges were dismissed against an E-6 accused of molesting a twelve-year-old girl at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, after the firm showed the hearing officer that the accuser had made similar false allegations at other installations. The page also lists discharge upgrades obtained by Attorney Gordon, including a correction from General Under Honorable Conditions to Honorable for a soldier whose depression and anxiety during service had not been considered, which restored eligibility for education benefits under the GI Bill. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.
Getting in touch
Free consultation through the web form or the office number, (717) 412-4676. Listed hours are Monday to Thursday 8:30 AM to 12:00 AM and Friday to Saturday 8:30 AM to 2:00 AM. The firm offers online payment, and its intake form carries a written consent notice for text messages.
Notes on the information above
The experience figures, trial counts, acquittal counts, awards, and the combined-experience total are each practice’s own published statements. Bar and court admissions are as listed by the practices. No bar record, court record, or case file was reviewed for this account. One inconsistency in the sources is worth knowing: the Crisp founder’s page describes six attorneys while the site carries five attorney biographies.
Sources
Read directly on 17 September 2026.
- jordanucmjlaw.com
- mymilitarylawyers.com
This account is descriptive. It is not legal advice, an endorsement, or an evaluation of either practice, and it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.