James P. Smith and the Business of Staying Useful

A company can change its name in a morning. A client still needs someone to answer the next question. In January 2025, the Washington firm James P. Smith founded became Smith Garson. Smith, long its president and chief executive, became chairman. For a founder whose working life had been attached to the business since 1981, the change offered a different sort of assignment: remain useful while another leader takes the executive chair.

One small piece of paperwork makes the transition unusually legible. Metroparks Toledo had engaged Smith Dawson and Andrews in September 2024. When the name changed, a board brief explained that payments would go to Smith Garson and that no substantive change in services was expected. The client’s concern was admirably practical. Whatever happened to the letterhead, the work needed to continue.

That is a useful way into Smith’s story. A founder’s biography invites attention to titles, access and longevity. His clients introduce another measure: whether a Washington conversation helps move something forward back home. Following that thread leads from a county council screen to federal agencies, and eventually back to a new name on the firm he built.

The view from the county meeting

On August 17, 2022, Smith appeared remotely before the Kaua‘i County Council. It was morning for the council and afternoon for him on the East Coast. He introduced colleagues Kierstin Stradford and Catherine Beal, then described a partnership involving the mayor’s office, council and county staff. The geography was broad; the meeting’s purpose was specific.

Among the developments he raised was a $24.8 million RAISE award for the Po‘ipū Road and mobility project, which he described at that point as pending Transportation Department approval. A federal acronym had a local destination. For residents, the relevant story would be the road. For the consultants and officials, it also involved the steps needed to bring a proposal through Washington.

The setting strips some theatrical varnish off government affairs. There is a council agenda, a remote connection and a report to give. People who hire a representative reasonably expect an explanation of what has happened. The annual appearance makes that relationship visible: the Washington adviser comes back, at least through a screen, to the local people whose priorities he represents.

Before the first letterhead

Smith’s route into the business began outside Washington. An Illinois native and Colorado State University graduate, he started his career working for the Governor of Illinois. He later served in intergovernmental and public affairs capacities in the Carter administration, at the White House and the departments of Transportation and Commerce. In 1981, he founded Smith Dawson & Andrews.

The sequence gives his later work a recognizable shape. State government came first, followed by jobs where different levels of government had to deal with one another. Transportation and commerce then remained subjects in his private-sector career. A county’s plans and a federal agency’s responsibilities occupy different desks. His professional history repeatedly puts him between those desks.

That background also helps explain why the firm’s local-government work belongs near the center of this profile. In a later Kaua‘i briefing, Brett Garson explicitly connected Smith’s Carter-era intergovernmental work to the company’s continuing emphasis on local government and infrastructure. An early career assignment had become part of a firm’s identity.

A timeline makes the progression look pleasantly orderly. The work itself has to accommodate other people’s calendars. A founder can choose when to open an office. The clients’ opportunities, the agency’s decisions and the legislature’s timetable will introduce their own opinions about what happens next.

The work has more than one author

By September 2024, Smith was again addressing Kaua‘i officials remotely, this time alongside a presentation by Kierstin Stradford-Patterson. He spoke about the Līhu‘e Town Center Mobility Project, the Po‘ipū Road project and the Lima Ola workforce housing development. He described a partnership among the county, his firm and Hawai‘i’s congressional delegation. Then he supplied a compact description of how such results happen.

“It took a collective effort.”

James P. Smith · Kaua‘i briefing, September 2024

The phrase is worth keeping intact. A government affairs biography can easily turn a team result into a personal trophy. Here, Smith’s own account leaves room for the other participants. Local officials develop priorities. Colleagues work on them. Elected representatives and agencies have their responsibilities. The outcome belongs to that arrangement of people.

The same briefing included questions about future infrastructure funding and local matching money. Smith’s answers stressed setting priorities and the role of a match in programs that require one. Even with a long relationship in place, the discussion returned to practical choices. A county must decide what it most needs and what it can bring to a proposal.

There is a pleasingly unromantic quality to that exchange. Influence, viewed from a public meeting, has to survive follow-up questions. Which project? Which route? What contribution? A resident reading the discussion can recognize the stakes without knowing anyone’s Washington telephone number.

Relationships have working lives

The public record also contains a quieter ending. In January 2024, the National Association of Foreign Trade-Zones announced that Sorini Samet and Associates would represent it following a selection process. Its president, Jeffrey Tafel, closed his letter by acknowledging the association’s long relationship with Smith Dawson Andrews and thanking Jim Smith for their partnership over the years.

That acknowledgment belongs in the story alongside the county briefings. A professional relationship can be substantial and still conclude. The letter gives both facts their space: another firm would take over, and Smith’s contribution merited thanks. A biography becomes more credible when it allows a client to have a next chapter of its own.

Nor was the company’s capacity built around Smith alone. Announcing Ben Odendahl’s appointment as senior counsel, Smith highlighted federal funding knowledge, congressional and agency relationships, and client development. In the announcement bringing KP Pratt into the firm, her legislative experience and relationships received similar attention. The recurring hiring question was how another person’s experience would add to the work.

Making room for the next name

Brett Garson’s succession had a long runway. His current biography places his arrival at the firm eighteen years before he became president and CEO of Smith Garson in 2025. An earlier leadership announcement identified him as chief counsel and managing director before his promotion to CEO and elevation to equity partner. The executive taking responsibility had already spent years inside the business.

Smith’s public assessment focused on Garson’s thinking. He praised his strategic contribution and his ability to anticipate opportunities and challenges. Those are telling qualities to identify in a successor at a consultancy. Clients bring situations that are still developing. The next executive needs judgment about what may happen, alongside knowledge of what has already happened.

The company’s naming transition and Smith’s move to chairman made that succession visible. For a reader, it is tempting to compress the whole affair into a handover date. The more useful picture includes the years preceding it: an associate becoming a senior colleague, leadership responsibilities expanding, and a founder arriving at a different role.

There is an ordinary courtesy in that picture. A founder receives attention for starting something. A colleague earns room to lead it. The client, meanwhile, has every reason to keep asking about the project rather than the stationery. Metroparks Toledo’s expectation of continuing service brings the story back to the people paying for the work.

A second kind of boardroom

Smith’s board work extends beyond the firm. He has chaired boards at Gonzaga College High School and the Barker Adoption Foundation. Those commitments place schools and family services beside the commercial work in his working life. They also give the word chairman a history beyond the title he took at Smith Garson.

It is a modest but useful detail. The same career can include advising a client, helping govern a school and preparing a business for another leader. A person’s working life seldom fits as neatly into one job description as a company directory would prefer.

The assignment continues

Smith’s present portfolio retains practical subjects: business development, trade, energy, technology and transportation, among others. His official role includes representing U.S. companies involved in rebuilding Puerto Rico’s energy, water and transportation infrastructure following disasters since 2017. The chairman’s title sits alongside continuing client work.

For all the years in this biography, its most revealing moments are small ones. A greeting across time zones. An introduction of colleagues. Credit shared with the people involved. A client’s expectation that service will continue after a name change. These details bring a long Washington career down to a scale a reader can recognize.

Smith founded the business. Garson now leads it. Somewhere beyond those titles, a public agency has another question about the next step. That is a serviceable place to leave a founder’s story: with work still on the desk.