T.J. Campbell grew up with the law all around him. As a boy, he studied coloring books while his lawyer father sat nearby studying the law. As he got older, he worked summers in his father’s law offices, which specialized in civil litigation and environmental law. During holidays, he listened to his grandfather — his mom’s dad, who also was an attorney — talking about defending insurance companies.
His father, Tom Campbell, became the general counsel of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in President George H.W. Bush’s administration where he saw his father deeply involved in the aftermath of the March 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, an environmental disaster caused when the energy giant’s supertanker crashed into Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, spilling 11 million gallons of oil.
“He had just started the job when the spill occurred, and for months he traveled back and forth between D.C. and Alaska, helping lead what became the largest environmental settlement of its time,” Campbell told The Texas Lawbook. “I’d always been drawn to science, but in that moment, I realized that lawyers were often the ones in the room making the critical decisions.
“The practice of law was always part of my world,” he said. “I saw firsthand how legal work shaped decisions and relationships. Still, my parents never pushed me toward law. I initially studied geology and worked briefly after graduation as a hydrogeologist. I loved the rigor and sense of discovery associated with science, but I realized I wanted to be closer to where decisions were made. That realization brought me back to what I’d grown up observing in my father and grandfather and ultimately led me to law school.”
Two decades later, Campbell is the general counsel and executive vice president at Howard Energy Partners, a privately held energy midstream and infrastructure operation that has witnessed extraordinary growth in recent years.
And Howard EP executives say that Campbell has been right in the thick of the action.
“T.J. has built his department from scratch and throughout his tenure, we have witnessed his remarkable growth not only in his legal abilities but also in his discernment between various aspects such as litigation, transactions, day-to-day management and long-term strategic planning,” Howard EP CEO Mike Howard, the company’s founder, told The Lawbook. “T.J.’s steady and non-emotional approach to situations has been instrumental in helping Howard Energy achieve our goals without creating an antagonistic environment, whether dealing with internal teams or external counterparties. Even in the most challenging negotiations, the opposing parties consistently commend his professionalism and his ability to drive toward solutions.”
“On a personal note, T.J. has a penchant for personal adventure trips, which is quite amusing given his role in managing corporate risks and his generally conservative nature,” Howard said. “Moreover, he is incredibly creative — undoubtedly our best writer and out-of-the-box thinker on the executive team.”
Citing his extraordinary successes, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s San Antonio Chapter and The Lawbook are awarding the 2025 San Antonio Corporate Counsel Award for General Counsel of the Year for a Midsized Legal Department (six to 19 lawyers) to T.J. Campbell.
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“Howard has closed on three major M&A transactions, signed one that will close later this year and is currently working on another acquisition,” Kirkland & Ellis partner Joshua Teahan wrote in nominating Campbell for the award. “In addition, Howard has completed four major financing transactions, including refinancings and high yield offerings, successfully settled a large litigation matter seen as a great outcome for the company and worked on a number of growth capital projects. The transactions they work on are complex and always synergistic to the company and its forward-looking focus. This year, Howard consummated the purchase of interests in its first interstate natural gas pipeline, further expanding the regulatory requirements the company is required to comply with and is now acting operator of that pipeline.”
Here is a brief summary of the work Campbell and his team have handled during the past year:
- Negotiated the acquisition of Epic’s ethylene pipeline;
- Acquired Cheniere’s interest in Midship Pipeline, which represented HEP’s entry into owning and operating a FERC-regulated transmission line;
- Raised nearly $3 billion of proceeds during 2025, some of which represented refinancing of existing indebtedness;
- Successfully resolved major litigation matters, including a wrongful death case resulting from a fire at a natural gas processing plant in Orla, Texas; and
- Negotiated the transaction documents for the Outer Loop Utility Project, which is a new 60-mile natural gas pipeline designed to connect local gas supply to existing energy infrastructure in San Antonio and the surrounding areas. The project will serve the people of San Antonio by helping bring gas into their homes and feedstock for the power plants powering its grid.
“Serving as the general counsel of a significant midstream player pulls T.J.’s attention in many different directions, which would be a challenge to anyone,” said Bracewell partner Benjamin Martin, who also nominated Campbell for the award.
“T.J. is fluent and fluid across a range of topics. From my viewpoint, I have seen him, in one day, transition from negotiating debt coverage ratios in a loan agreement to working capital adjustments in an M&A transaction to exercising judgment regarding strategic procedural decisions in a material piece of litigation. All of those are operating at the highest level of the particular practice area that we in the law firm are able to ‘specialize’ in. T.J. is a generalist, and he approaches all things with a sense of practicality that allows for transactions to get done. More importantly, that practicality gives him credibility when he says ‘no.’”
Martin, who has represented Howard EP on several transactional matters, said Campbell is a great leader because he “is invested in the success of HEP and the individuals who report to him.”
“T.J. started at a very capable place but has developed systems and lieutenants that allow him to perform his job with what appears to be relative ease to those of us observing,” he said. “That is not something that occurs overnight. It requires long-term dedication and commitment to an organization.”
Campbell, a former lawyer at Winstead, joined Howard EP in 2014 as assistant GC and was promoted to GC in 2021.
“No two days ever look the same, and that’s one of the things I love most about the job,” he said. “My work sits at the intersection of strategy, risk and execution, so every day brings a different challenge. In the end, the most rewarding part of my job is knowing that our work has purpose. We are not only building infrastructure — we are building understanding, stability and opportunity. That sense of meaning is what keeps me, and many others here, motivated every day.”
Campbell was born in Provo, Utah, where his parents attended Brigham Young University.
While his father practiced law and worked on political campaigns, Campbell’s mother stayed home to raise the couple’s five children.
Campbell said his family’s influence on his career path extended beyond the practice of law.
“My grandmother, Beverly Campbell, served as the director of public and international affairs for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where she became a respected voice for religious freedom and women’s rights around the world,” he said. “She often hosted ambassadors and their families at her home in Washington, D.C., and as a kid, I had the chance to be around those gatherings. Those experiences left a lasting impression on me and taught me that advocacy can take many forms and that law, policy and public engagement are deeply connected.”
Campbell followed in his parents’ footsteps, attending BYU for college, where he studied geology. While at BYU, he completed an internship with a mining company in Brazil “that produced niobium, an element added to steel to increase its strength and temperature resistance.”
“Having previously served a church mission in Brazil, I already spoke Portuguese and was eager to experience the country in a professional setting,” he said. “The work fascinated me because of the scale of the operations, the precision of the engineering and the way science and industry came together to create something essential to modern life. That experience sparked a lasting interest in industrial enterprises and the infrastructure that keeps the world running.”
“Although I eventually chose law over geology, that early exposure to large-scale, technical industries stayed with me,” he said. “It shaped my appreciation for the energy sector and ultimately led me to pursue a career in oil and gas, where complex systems, science and strategy intersect in meaningful ways.”
Campbell graduated from BYU law school in 2007, then joined the Winstead law firm in its venture capital practice. His focus evolved into representing smaller public companies that had little or no in-house legal support, which basically meant serving as their outside general counsel.
The seven years he practiced at Winstead had two significant impacts on his career development.
“First, it gave me a broad corporate foundation. I worked on everything from mergers and acquisitions to equity offerings, debt refinancings and securities filings,” he said. “Second, it gave me a deep appreciation for how businesses operate. Because I worked so closely with management teams on nearly every aspect of their companies, I learned how legal advice fits into real-world decision-making.”
Campbell said that experience “gave me an early glimpse of what in-house life could be like.”
“I enjoyed building long-term relationships with clients, understanding how companies worked and helping management teams navigate complex and sometimes stressful decisions,” he said. “Over time, I realized I wanted to take that next step and be part of one company, sharing directly in its challenges and growth.”
Campbell said he had two criteria for a potential in-house position.
“I wanted to join a company in a period of high growth because I have always been drawn to the pace and challenge of bringing order to fast-moving situations,” he said. “I also wanted to work for an organization with a clear sense of culture and purpose.”
Then he met Mike Howard, who had left Energy Transfer to start his own company in 2011.
“Within minutes, I could tell he had a genuine sense of mission,” Campbell said. “He wanted to build something of his own, a company that would not just flip assets but create something lasting and meaningful. That clarity of vision stood out from others I had met in the industry. I decided to take the leap, move my family to San Antonio and join Howard Energy. It is a decision I have never regretted.”
Since joining Howard EP in 2011, Campbell has seen his corporate duties expand significantly.
As Bracewell noted in its nomination, Campbell is also the corporate secretary, manages governance and compliance issues related to the HEP board and six joint ventures, oversees HEP’s obligations in Mexico with respect to its Nueva Era pipeline supplying Texas-sourced natural gas to Monterrey, Mexico, and leads the company’s government affairs department, where he helps craft the company’s advocacy strategy and oversees the work of the company’s state and federal lobbyists.
Haynes Boone partner Ernest Martin worked with Campbell on the highly complex, high-stakes litigation from the 2020 fire at the natural gas processing plant in West Texas, which involved a high-profile plaintiff’s lawyer, multiple parties, numerous insurers and huge financial stakes.
“T.J. reflected being a resourceful captain who led the various constituents with grace and determination,” Martin said. “I was impressed with his attention to detail, his ability to make everyone feel valued and his ability to continue to move the process along. More than many lawyers I know, T.J. exhibits a true strength in emotional intelligence — a trait that was paramount in T.J. being able to achieve a positive resolution to a very challenging situation facing the company. It was an honor to work alongside him and witness how he used his many talents to thwart a potential litigation disaster.”
Troutman Pepper Locke partner John Arnold said Campbell “pays attention to detail, as a good lawyer must, but he also has his head up evaluating broader opportunities and challenges.”
“T.J. has been adept at understanding and executing on the fundamentals of a Texas midstream company, while also helping expand the view of what such a company can do into terminal operations, Mexican project development and exploring how those midstream fundamentals will allow Howard to expand into other markets,” Arnold said. “T.J. can appear to be quiet, but the wheels are always turning. He is not the loudest person in the room but is often the most thoughtful.”
Herschel Hamner, a partner at Sidley Austin in Houston, said that Campbell has “helped Howard navigate some thorny situations and he has overseen numerous significant transactions for Howard.
“T.J. wants to really understand the nuances of the issues, and he welcomes discussion among his business team, internal legal team and external counsel to get to the right answer,” Hamner said. “However, I think one of T.J.’s biggest highlights has been his ability to step into the role of general counsel at a relatively young age when the role became vacant and finding tremendous success by leaning into his strengths. He quickly established himself as a very effective GC by immersing himself in the details of Howard’s complex structure, providing well-reasoned advice, building consensus, and demonstrating an overall level-headedness even in difficult situations.”
Lawyers say that there are few lawyers in Texas who work harder or smarter than Campbell.
“A typical morning might start with a discussion about financing strategy, reviewing terms for an expanded credit facility or a new debt issuance, followed by a meeting with our commercial and engineering teams to negotiate key agreements on a growth project like the Outer Loop pipeline,” Campbell said. “Later that same day, I might be advising the board on governance issues, helping craft materials for one of our six joint ventures, or working with the executive team to align near-term decisions with our five-year strategic plan.”
Kirkland’s Teahan has worked with Campbell on numerous deals during the past two years.
“TJ and his legal department deserve this award because the group, while only consisting of seven lawyers, has successfully completed, or is in the process of completing, a dozen major transactions over the last year while maintaining a fantastic working environment where the legal professionals care about and support one another,” Teahan said. “I have had the privilege of interacting with each member of the legal team through a number of transactions over the last couple years, and from top to bottom it is filled with great people who care about the company and its mission.”
Fun Facts: T.J. Campbell
- Favorite book: While not technically a single book, I would choose Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson series. I enjoy biographies, but I have never read another that digs as deeply or offers a more compelling look into a life, a specific time and place and the nature of power. It is history, character study and political education all in one.
- Favorite movie: This is a tough one. I would go with Better Off Dead. It’s a pretty absurd movie, but it definitely spoke to my sense of humor as a kid, and I reference back to it a lot.
- Favorite vacation: Last winter I took my wife and two boys — 13 and 11 — to Northern Norway for Christmas break. For a while we had been looking for an adventure, and we decided to try a very different Christmas experience. We flew into a town about 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The sun never fully rose — although we would get sunset like conditions for about four hours a day. We saw amazing Northern Lights, drove dogsleds, fed reindeer and even put on massive drysuits to snorkel with orcas. It was definitely a bucket list experience.
- Favorite restaurant: A Mexican restaurant called La Fogota that sits between my office and my home has become a favorite spot for my family. I often meet my wife and kids there after work. A massive live oak shades the back patio, and we love having dinner there at the end of a long week.
- Hero in life: My dad is definitely one of my heroes. In some of my earlier answers, I’ve mentioned his influence on my decision to become a lawyer, but his impact goes much deeper than that. More than guiding me toward a particular career, he taught me to make my work meaningful. Throughout his life, my dad consistently stepped outside his comfort zone to pursue endeavors that mattered to him and served a larger purpose. That example has shaped how I approach my own life and career. His willingness to seek meaning over convenience has guided many of the major decisions I’ve made, both personally and professionally.