John A. Hull

Who was John A. Hull?

John Adley Hull was a Judge Advocate General in the U.S. Army and an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines.

Hull was born in Bloomfield, Iowa to Civil War officer and longtime Iowa Congressman John A.T. Hull and his wife, Emma Gregory Hull. He received a law degree from the University of Iowa College of Law.

At the beginning of the Spanish-American War he enlisted in the Iowa National Guard and was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and Judge Advocate for the U.S. Volunteers. In 1901, he was appointed a major in the Judge Advocate General's Corps. He would serve as legal advisor to Governor-General of the Philippines Francis Burton Harrison from 1913 to 1921.

He married Norma Bowler King at Fort Meyers, Virginia, in 1919. She would divorce him on May 22, 1934, in Reno, Nevada.

In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge nominated him to be judge advocate general of the Army with the rank of major general, a position he held until 1928, when he retired from the Army. In 1927, it was thought he would succeed Leonard Wood as Governor-General of the Philippines, but Coolidge instead chose past and future cabinet member Henry L. Stimson.