Gary L. Smith Jr. (born August 27, 1972), is an American attorney from his native Norco in St. Charles Parish,

Louisiana Louisiana ( ; ; ) is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It borders Texas to the west, Arkansas to the north, and Mississippi to the east. Of the 50 U.S. states, it ranks 31st in area and 25 ...

, who is a former Democratic member of the

Louisiana State Senate The Louisiana State Senate (; ) is the upper house of Louisiana’s legislature. Senators serve four-year terms and participate in various committees. Composition The Louisiana State Senate has 39 members elected from single-member districts ...

for

District 19 A district is a type of administrative division that in some countries is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions ...

, a position which he held from 2012 to 2024. He succeeded the

term-limited A term limit is a legal restriction on the number of terms a person may serve in a particular elected office. When term limits are found in presidential and semi-presidential systems they act as a method of curbing the potential for monopoly, whe ...

Democratic Senator

Joel T. Chaisson, II St. Charles Parish () is a List of parishes in Louisiana, parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, its population was 52,549. The parish seat is Hahnville, Louisiana, Hahnville and the most p ...

Personal life and education

Smith graduated in 1990 from

Destrehan High School Destrehan High School is a public high school located in Destrehan, Louisiana, Destrehan, Louisiana, United States and is approximately twenty-five miles west of New Orleans. It is part of the St. Charles Parish Public School System and serves all ...

in Destrehan in St. Charles Parish. In 1994, he earned a

Bachelor of Business Administration A Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) is an undergraduate degree in business administration awarded by colleges and universities after completion of four years and typically 120 credits of undergraduate study in the fundamentals of busine ...

degree from

Louisiana State University Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as Louisiana State University (LSU), is an American Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louis ...

Baton Rouge Baton Rouge ( ; , ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Louisiana. It had a population of 227,470 at the 2020 United States census, making it List of municipalities in Louisiana, Louisiana's second-m ...

. He earned his

Juris Doctor A Juris Doctor, Doctor of Jurisprudence, or Doctor of Law (JD) is a graduate-entry professional degree that primarily prepares individuals to practice law. In the United States and the Philippines, it is the only qualifying law degree. Other j ...

from

Loyola University New Orleans College of Law Loyola University New Orleans College of Law is a private law school in New Orleans, Louisiana affiliated with Loyola University New Orleans. Loyola's law school opened in 1914 and is now located on the Broadway Campus of the university in the hi ...

in 1998 and an

LLM A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with Self-supervised learning, self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially Natural language generation, language g ...

from Tulane Law School in 1999. He is married to Katherine Mosley, the granddaughter of U.S. Senator

Russell Long Russell Billiu Long (November 3, 1918 – May 9, 2003) was an American Democratic politician and United States Senator from Louisiana from 1948 until 1987. Because of his seniority, he advanced to chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, servin ...

and the great-granddaughter of Louisiana Governor

Huey Long Huey Pierce Long Jr. (August 30, 1893September 10, 1935), nicknamed "The Kingfish", was an American politician who served as the 40th governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932 and as a United States senator from 1932 until his assassination i ...

Career

Smith interned for

Senator A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or Legislative chamber, chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the Ancient Rome, ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior ...

John Breaux John Berlinger Breaux (; born March 1, 1944) is an American lobbyist, attorney, and retired politician from Louisiana. He served in the United States House of Representatives, U.S. House of Representatives from 1972 to 1987 and as a United State ...

and Congressman

Billy Tauzin Wilbert Joseph Tauzin II (; born June 14, 1943) is an American lobbyist and politician. He served as the President and CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a pharmaceutical company lobby group, from 2005 to ...

. Smith was elected to the

Louisiana House of Representatives The Louisiana House of Representatives (; ) is the lower house in the Louisiana State Legislature, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Louisiana. This chamber is composed of 105 representatives, each of whom represents approximately 4 ...

in 2000, and to the

in 2012.

References

External links

Vote Smart page

Ballotpedia profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Gary Jr. 1972 births Destrehan High School alumni Living people Louisiana State University alumni Loyola University New Orleans College of Law alumni Democratic Party members of the Louisiana House of Representatives Democratic Party Louisiana state senators People from Norco, Louisiana Tulane University Law School alumni 21st-century members of the Louisiana State Legislature