President Donald Trump on Monday nominated the head of Air Mobility Command, Gen. John Lamontagne, to be the Air Force’s next vice chief of staff.
Brig. Gen. Christopher Eason, currently the chief of staff and commander of the Oklahoma Air National Guard, has also been nominated to be the Air Force’s next judge advocate general and receive his second star.
The nominations, if approved by the Senate, would fill two positions that have been vacant since Trump fired their predecessors, former Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Jim Slife and former JAG Lt. Gen. Charles Plummer, as part of a broad purge of military leadership in February.
The Air Force did not have a comment on their nominations.
Lamontagne has led AMC since September 2024, and is a command C-17 Globemaster and KC-135 Stratotanker pilot with more than 4,000 flight hours. He has also flown the C-12.
He has held a variety of other leadership roles in his more than three decades in the Air Force, including deputy commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa, chief of staff of U.S. European Command, deputy director for the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and commander of the 618th Air Operations Center at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois.
Lamontagne has also commanded the 437th Airlift Wing at Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina ,and served as AMC’s deputy director of operations.
The White House previously nominated Gen. Thomas Bussiere, who was head of Air Force Global Strike Command, to be vice chief of staff, but his nomination was withdrawn in September and Bussiere has since retired.
Eason has served in the Air Force for more than two decades since graduating from the University of Oklahoma’s College of Law in 2004, according to the Oklahoma National Guard’s website. He has held a variety of staff judge advocate roles and once prosecuted two members of al Qaida, including Osama bin Laden’s media secretary.
Eason serves as a federal prosecutor for the Justice Department in his civilian career, and has prosecuted public corruption, drug trafficking, money laundering and white collar crime cases.
Trump also nominated Maj. Gen. Thomas Suelzer, Texas’ adjutant general, to be the next director of the Air National Guard and pin on the rank of lieutenant general. If confirmed, Suelzer would replace Maj. Gen. Duke Pirak, who has been acting ANG director since June 2024.
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.
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