A Commitment to Service
(L to R): Military veterans Sean Godfrey '26, Phillip Rudy '25, and Willis Huynh '26 worked together to establish the Veterans Students Association. Photo credit: Conor Sullivan
Meet Three Students Who Were Inspired to Go to Law School After Serving in the Military
The path to pursuing a J.D. for students who are military veterans is unique, and, for the three Brooklyn Law students introduced below, it was also partly inspired by their experiences serving in the U.S. Armed Forces, where they learned about teamwork, leadership, and the importance of giving back to others through public service.
This fall, Brooklyn Law School expanded its commitment to military veterans through the Yellow Ribbon Program, a post-9/11 GI Bill administered by the Veterans Administration (VA), which will now ensure full-tuition support for qualifying veterans at Brooklyn Law School.
At the same time, three Brooklyn Law students established the Veteran Students Association (VSA), which seeks to raise the school’s profile among prospective students who are veterans, connect U.S. armed forces veterans at the school, and establish and grow a supportive community that advocates for their needs. Profiled below are Phillip Rudy ’25, who is the group’s president, Sean Godfrey ’26, the vice president, and Willis Huynh ’26, the treasurer. Both Rudy and Godfrey are benefiting from the expanded Yellow Ribbon Program. Huynh receives VA assistance for housing and tuition but is not impacted by the Yellow Ribbon expansion since he already received undergraduate education benefits.
From the Navy to a Judicial Clerkship
After years of working as a theatrical stage manager in New York City, Phillip Rudy ’25 was commissioned as a submarine warfare officer at age 30. He joined the U.S. Navy to provide a more stable life for his newborn son, but while stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, aboard the U.S.S. Hawai’i, as his tour was coming to an end, he decided on a new direction.
"I wanted a career that was both as intellectually challenging as operating a nuclear reactor but also as impactful as serving my country as a naval officer,” Rudy said.
When COVID struck in 2020, he was already underway on a submarine mission and the crew were told to continue sailing to avoid exposure to the virus, so it was not until after that year’s presidential elections that they were permitted to surface. Before that, with no means to contact family and no Internet access, Rudy did a lot of reading.
One book that had a profound effect on his decision to go into law and his interest in public interest law was Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson, an attorney and the founder of Equal Justice Initiative, who won national acclaim for his work challenging prosecutorial bias against the poor and people of color. Rudy also gained firsthand experience in military law when he was tasked with investigating alleged violations by other service members of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
“As an investigating officer for any disciplinary infraction, I was instructed to find proof of guilt, and I thought I should instead be ordered to find the truth,” he said. “It really resonated with me how it is that way for prosecutors everywhere. It is important that they wield that power by finding the truth, not by simply winning a conviction.”
At Brooklyn Law, Rudy has found a place that resonates with his values. As a single dad, he was grateful to be allowed to bring his son to Admitted Students Day, where Professor Alexis Hoag-Fordjour taught the sample class and even took a question from his son, answering his question as she would any of the prospective students. Unlike the presentations from the faculty at other schools he visited, Hoag-Fordjour spoke to students about contemporary legal issues, specifically racial bias in jury selection.
“What I wanted in a law school was classes that are closer to my interests, and more cognizant of pulling the levers of the law to promote equality and justice,” Rudy said.
The practical experience he gained working with consumers at Access Justice Brooklyn as part of a consumer credit defense clinic for low-income consumers inspired Rudy to author a research paper he submitted to the inaugural symposium of the Brooklyn Law and Political Economy Collective last spring.
“If BLS didn’t steer me to the clinic, I wouldn’t have been able to do that," he said.
This past summer he was a legal intern at the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division’s criminal enforcement program in New York. He has been selected as a New York Court of Appeals Pro Bono Scholar, will take the bar exam in February 2025 and spend the remainder of the spring semester working full time at the New York County Defender Services, a public defense firm, until graduation. The stable career he wanted, now in law, is coming into focus, thanks to some deeply appreciated assistance and advice from a teacher he had in his 2L year, Professor Wilfred Codrington III, whose guidance helped him land a clerkship. In August, Rudy accepted a post-graduate position as a clerk for the Hon. Ona T. Wang in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York. Wang previously worked for the Equal Justice Initiative while in private practice and in a moment of happy coincidence took out an autographed copy of the book Just Mercy during his interview.
Air Force Veteran with MBA Changes Path
Sean M. Godfrey ’26, who is originally from Fayetteville, N.Y., served in the U.S. Air Force from 2007 to 2013, and was based at Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas, where he specialized in operations management. After leaving the military, he earned an MBA and worked as a management consultant, providing advocacy for corporate clients. Then came the pandemic.
“Like many people during COVID, I started to rethink my priorities, including what I was doing and what I had always really wanted to do,” Godfrey said. “I didn’t really like what I was doing. I was very unhappy with the impact, or the lack thereof, that I was making.”
Over the years, he had observed how lawyers were stepping up to help people, such as when immigration lawyers assisted those who were being denied entry at U.S. airports under a 2019 travel ban targeting those arriving from predominantly Muslim countries.
“It became clear to me that lawyers are in a very unique place to be able to do a lot of good for people and act as advocates in a meaningful way,” Godfrey said. “I wanted to get back to the type of work I had done previously, working to serve people.”
His corporate and military experience helped ground him with real-world experience as he started his legal studies. After starting law school, he knew he had made the right choice.
“My first year of law school was one of the best years of my life,” Godfrey said. “It's been a lot of work, obviously alongside very smart people, and we're all highly competitive, but it has been really great and a fulfilling challenge. I’m able to talk to other students about things that we’re all equally passionate about.”
He spent his first-year summer interning at Bronx Legal Services in its tenant rights coalition group working on affirmative litigation for tenants, and he is now looking at different types of law to determine his post-graduate path. “I’m exploring my options, but prosecutorial litigation, antitrust law, and digital privacy rights are some of the areas I’m interested in,” Godfrey said.
The expansion of the Yellow Ribbon Program will not only close a significant gap for eligible military members who wish to attend law school, but it will benefit Godfrey directly. It will also encourage other veterans, who can “provide valuable perspectives and bring experience from the field,” to join the Brooklyn Law School community, he said. Similarly, he is pleased at the Veteran Students Association being admitted as an official registered-student organization this fall and the instant network it will create among current and future students who served in the military.
“It's a very specific lifestyle, a very particular community and culture, and for a lot of people, that can be a very challenging transition,” Godfrey said. “Just having a group of people who have similar experiences and are able to help aid in that transition adds a lot of value.”
From the Army Directly to Law School
U.S. Army veteran Willis Huynh ’26, who attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point prior to joining Brooklyn Law, is grateful for how the military experience geared him up for the rigors of law school.
Huynh noted that the demanding environment at West Point was instrumental in preparing him to study law. Additionally, he found that his prior career as an artillery officer helped him gain valuable leadership experience and maturity before entering law school. “What’s great about being a vet, is that you've had an opportunity to get a better head on your shoulders and faster,” Huynh said.
Since starting at Brooklyn Law School in the fall of 2023, Huynh has jumped right into the role, both academically and through his involvement in student groups such as the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association and the Brooklyn Business Law Association. Now a 2L, Huynh is a staff editor on the Brooklyn Law Review in addition to his role in SVA. He and his fellow veteran law students were passionate about forming a group that can support both prospective and current veteran students.
“Being able to give back to a community that has given us so much is a big part of why we're choosing to do this,” Huynh said. “This gives us an opportunity to reach out to the veteran community and legal community, but also gives us a chance to assist prospective law students applying to Brooklyn Law School.”
Professionally, Huynh said he enjoyed working with Brooklyn Law’s Career Development Center because of the staff's strong advocacy for diversity programs within the legal profession. This past summer, he joined a cohort of seven students selected for the LatinoJustice PRLDEF’s 2024 Corporate/Law Firm Alliance Summer Program (CLASP), which places students with top law firms and Fortune 500 companies. Huynh interned with New York Life Insurance Co. in its general counsel’s office in the summer of 2024, and continues working there during the academic year. After the end of the spring semester, he will join Willkie Farr & Gallagher as a 2L summer associate in 2025. He hopes to practice in the firm’s asset management and private equity groups.