Garland R. Hunt is a proven strategic leader with a dynamic ministry background and extensive experience in criminal justice, religious liberty and race relations. He recently authored “Crisis in America: A Christian Response” (2021).
Hunt’s executive leadership spans some 30 years, with the Fellowship of International Churches, Wellington Boone Ministries and New Generation Campus Ministries, which prepared him for an appointment as President of Prison
Fellowship in July of 2011 until September of 2013, an organization that partners
with some 7,700 churches and 14,000 volunteers.
He has extensive work as an advocate for religious liberty, racial healing and criminal justice reform. He is co-Founder of the OneRace Racial Healing Movement. He also served as a consultant with Alliance Defending Freedom and co-founder of the Coalition of Religious Liberty in Georgia. Hunt serves on the Board of Directors and as the Vice Chairman of Crossroads Prison Ministries and has served as Vice President of the Association of Paroling Authorities International. He currently serves on the Advisory Board for the National Committee for Religious Freedom with Ambassador Sam Brownback.
Most recently, Hunt was appointed as President of The Douglass Leadership Institute (DLI).
In 2023, Hunt was appointed as a board member to the Department of Juvenile Justice by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. In early 2021, Hunt was appointed by Governor Brian Kemp (GA) to the State Housing Trust Fund for the Homeless Commission.
In March 2015, Hunt was installed as Senior Pastor of the Father’s House in Norcross Georgia. Each week, Bishop Hunt demonstrates his pastor’s heart through his passionate preaching and vibrant leadership.
In 2010, he was commissioner of the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice, overseeing a staff of 4,500 employees, and managed the care of 52,000 youth who were under the supervision and detention of the juvenile justice department.
In 2004, Hunt was appointed to the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles, by Governor Sonny Perdue as a member of an executive board authorized to grant paroles, pardons, reprieves, remissions, commutations and the restoration of civil and political rights for Georgia’s inmates. Hunt became chairman of the board in 2006.
In 1993, he founded the Raleigh International Church; an influential ministry with the mission of racial reconciliation.
After completing a B.A. from Howard University and JD from Howard University School of Law, Hunt served as a judicial law clerk and staff attorney with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Garland and his lovely wife Eileen have been married for 39 years. They have three grown children, Garland Jr., Christa, Jeremy, daughter-in-laws Melissa and Ky, son-in-law Brian, and seven grandchildren.