CAPT James P. McGrath III

Captain Jamie McGrath '90 (U.S. Navy, retired) is the director for the Major General W. Thomas Rice Center for Leader Development.

He joined the commandant's staff in 2019 as the deputy commandant of cadets for 3rd Battalion and moved to the Rice Center in October 2021.

CAPT McGrath grew up in Rochester, New York. He graduated cum laude from Virginia Tech in 1990 with a bachelor's degree in history and was commissioned through Naval ROTC. He holds a master's degrees in national security and strategic studies with distinction from the Naval War College and military history from Norwich University. He is a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer.

Initial assignments at sea included duty as first lieutenant on the USS Valdez (FF 1096) and as repair division officer and damage control assistant on the USS Mississippi (CGN 40). He served as operations officer on the USS Hayler (DD 997), and as reactor electrical assistant on the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75). As executive officer of the USS Halyburton (FFG 40) he deployed with Standing Naval Forces Atlantic for Operation Active Endeavour supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. He served as future operations branch head and ballistic missile defense officer on the staff of the commander of U.S. 7th Fleet forward deployed in Yokosuka, Japan. In December 2006, he assumed command of Maritime Expeditionary Security Squadron 7 in Guam, where his sailors deployed supporting task force commanders throughout 5th, 6th and 7th Fleet. He later served as assistant reactor officer on the Harry S Truman.

Duties ashore two years at Naval Nuclear Power School where he served as an instructor and division director in chemistry, materials and radiological fundamentals, and was designated as a Master Training Specialist. He attended the College of Naval Command and Staff at the Naval War College, where he was selected as the President’s Honor Graduate. CAPT McGrath served as the liaison for the commander of Naval Forces Europe to the commander of U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, and was designated as a Joint Qualified Officer. He served as chief of the Joint Exercise Division, Deputy Directorate for Joint Training, on the Joint Staff J7 in Suffolk, Virginia.

CAPT McGrath’s last active duty assignment was as a military professor in joint military operations at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. There he served as a senior moderator and as a Fellow in the John B. Hattendorf Center for Maritime Historical Research. He continues to serve the Naval War College as an adjunct professor in the College of Distance Education.

Passionate about using history to inform today, CAPT McGrath has written about U.S. Naval history from 1919 to 1945 with emphasis on the inter-war period, about contemporary naval topics, and on the future of military officer education. His articles have appeared in the Naval War College Review, US Naval Institute Proceedings, Naval History Magazine, Tidsskrift for Søvæsen, the Journal for Peace and War, and the Center for International Maritime Security, and he has presented papers at the McMullen Naval History Symposium and the International Symposium of Military Academies. He also serves as an associate editor at the Center for International Maritime Security and a peer reviewer for the Naval War College Review.

He is married to the former Kirsten Clos ‘90 of Glenview, Illinois. They have two grown children, Abigail ’16 and Samuel ’21 and two grandsons.