James Garvey

On October 15, 2015, The Baton Rouge Advocate reported that PAC-Empower Louisiana had allocated about $818,000 to the BESE races. The PAC members included Alice and Jim Walton, Wal-Mart heirs who reside in Bentonville, Arkansas, and Eli Broad of Los Angeles, California. Four candidates in eight districts, including Garvey, were declared "acceptable" to Empower Louisiana; Garvey received $230,459 from the group, the most of any in the state. Another report placed his independent expenditure PAC contributions at $217,493 from independent expenditure PACS.

In February 2015, Garvey called for an early review of the Common Core standards to seek consensus: "That is something that I have been pushing behind the scenes." BESE requires a review every seven years; the compromise plan moved up the review by one year. "We still have the authority on what is in our standards. We have not given up any control to the feds [U.S. government] despite what some people have been claiming to the contrary," Garvey added. Barrios disagreed with Garvey on key policy issues. Garvey predicted that voters will benefit from the contrasting views of the candidates: "If I have to run against someone, I would like it to be a clear choice for the public."

As the sitting board vice president, Garvey won his third term on the board against Lee Barrios, who ran in 2015 as a Republican. Garvey outspent Barrios $218,460 to $2,886. The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry contributed $40,000 to Garvey; departing BESE president Chas Roemer gave him $2,500. The bulk of Garvey's funding was left over from the 2011 race; he raised $21,200 in nine contributions between July to September 2015.

Garvey polled 84,447 votes (71 percent) to Barrios' 34,487 (29 percent). In the same 2015 primary in which Garvey defeated Barrios, his other former opponent from 2011, Sharon Hewitt, was elected to the District 1 seat in the Louisiana State Senate vacated by the retiring A. G. Crowe. Hewitt handily defeated her intra-party rival, former State Representative Pete Schneider of Lacombe.

Garvey is a campaign contributor to his fellow New Orleans area Republicans David Vitter, the U.S. senator who is running for governor in 2015, and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana's 1st congressional district.

James Donald "Jim" Garvey, Jr. 2008–

Garvey won the BESE seat, an unpaid position but with reimbursement for expenses, without opposition in the nonpartisan blanket primary held on October 20, 2007. The position opened when Republican Penny Dastugue, the wife of former State Representative Quentin D. Dastugue, did not seek reelection. In the 2011 primary, Garvey won a second term by defeating two opponents, fellow Republican Sharon Hewitt of Slidell in St. Tammany Parish, and the No-Party candidate Lee Price Barrios, a Baton Rouge native, a former manuscript assistant to the author Walker Percy, and a retired teacher who resides in Abita Springs, also in St. Tammany Parish. Garvey polled 57,910 votes (58.4 percent); Hewitt, 29,483 (29.7 percent); Barrios, 11,856 (12 percent).

Admitted to the bar in 1992, Garvey has been affiliated since 2006 with the Metairie office of the firm, Hailey McNamara, with specialization in product liability, commercial transportation, personal property litigation, and insurance law. He handled numerous cases stemming from Hurricane Katrina. One of his law partners is his cousin, Richard J. Garvey, Jr.

In 1982, James Garvey, Jr., graduated from the Catholic-affiliated Jesuit High School in New Orleans. In 1987, he received a Bachelor of Business Administration from Loyola University New Orleans. In 1991, Garvey obtained a Master of Business Administration from Loyola and a Juris Doctorate that same year from Loyola University New Orleans College of Law.

James Donald Garvey, Jr., known as Jim Garvey (born March 1964) is a lawyer and Certified Public Accountant from Metairie in suburban Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, United States. He is a Republican member of the eleven-person (eight elected, three appointed) Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, which sets and monitors education policy. Since 2008, he has represented District 1, which encompasses populous Jefferson, Orleans, and St. Tammany parishes.

Garvey is descended from a prominent Roman Catholic family in his native New Orleans, a grandson of Thomas Joseph Garvey and the former Loretta Kuntz. His father, James Garvey, Sr., and his uncle, Lawrence "Larry" Garvey, established the former Radiofone paging company, based in Metairie, into a regional wireless telecommunications operation. The Garvey brothers launched the company in 1958 with the conversion of their parents' physician-calling business. In 1984, they demonstrated their cellular telephone service at the New Orleans World's Fair. From 1992 to 2000, early in his legal career, Garvey Jr., was counsel for Radiofone. In 2000, however, the Garvey brothers sold Radiofone for $400 million to SBC Communications. It was then sold again to the former Alltel company, based in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Lawrence Garvey was heavily involved in the right to life movement in New Orleans. Another Garvey uncle, Richard Joseph Garvey, Sr. (1926-2015), born in Pierce City, Missouri, moved to New Orleans at the age of three. He was a Loyola graduate and from 1966 to 1996 the Division C judge of the Orleans Parish Civil District Court.