Colonel “J.P.” McDonough is the 89th Commandant of Midshipmen at the US Naval Academy. He is a career artillery officer and has held operational assignments in every level of command including Commander, 10th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division. He has numerous deployments under his belt in the War on Terror as commanding officer of artillery units, and embedded training with the Afghan National Army. Besides Staff and Joint tours, he served as a modeling and simulation analyst for multiple simulation programs at the USMC Training and Education Command.

Colonel McDonough graduated from the Naval Academy with a Bachelor of Science in Systems Engineering in 1994. He earned a master’s degree in virtual environments, modeling and simulation from the Naval Postgraduate School, and graduated with distinction from the Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy at National Defense University.