Gregory Wayne Abbott ( ABB-ət; born November 13, 1957) is an American politician, attorney, and jurist serving since 2015 as the 48th governor of Texas. A member of the Republican Party, he served from 2002 to 2015 as the 50th attorney general of Texas and from 1996 to 2001 as a justice of the Texas Supreme Court. As of 2025, Abbott is the longest-serving incumbent governor in the United States.
Born in Wichita Falls, Texas, Abbott grew up between Longview and Duncanville. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Business Administration in 1981 and from Vanderbilt University with a Juris Doctor in 1984. After going into private practice, working for Butler and Binion, LLP between 1984 and 1992, he began his judicial career in Houston, where he served as a state trial judge in the 129th District Court for three years. Before becoming attorney general, Abbott was a justice of the Texas Supreme Court, a position to which he was appointed in 1995 by Governor George W. Bush. Abbott won a full term in 1998 with 60% of the vote. After resigning from the Supreme Court to run for Texas lieutenant governor, Abbott returned to private practice and worked for Bracewell & Giuliani in 2001.
Abbott was elected Texas attorney general with 57% of the vote in 2002 and reelected with 60% in 2006 and 64% in 2010. He became the longest-serving attorney general in state history, with 12 years of service, and was the third Republican to hold that office since the Reconstruction era. As attorney general, Abbott successfully advocated for the Texas State Capitol to display the Ten Commandments in the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court case Van Orden v. Perry, and unsuccessfully defended the state's ban on same-sex marriage. He was also involved in numerous lawsuits against the administration of Barack Obama, seeking to invalidate the Affordable Care Act and the administration's environmental regulations.
Elected in 2014, Abbott is the first Texas governor and third governor of a U.S. state to use a wheelchair, the others being Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York and George Wallace of Alabama. He was reelected in 2018 and in 2022, and is running for an unprecedented fourth term in 2026. As governor, Abbott supported the first administration of Donald Trump and has promoted a strongly conservative agenda, including maintaining Texas's total abortion ban, loosening gun laws, increasing law enforcement funding, and tightening voting rights. In response to the power crisis following a February 2021 winter storm, Abbott called for reforms to Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and signed a bill requiring power plant weatherization. During the COVID-19 pandemic in Texas, Abbott opposed implementing face mask and vaccine mandates, while blocking local governments, businesses, and other organizations from implementing their own. He has also made a priority of fighting illegal immigration, starting Operation Lone Star in 2021. Abbott was on Time magazine's Time 100 list in 2024.
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