BOP Deputy Director and Former Prisoner Resigns After Just One Year
In June 2025, Joshua J. Smith, a Tennessee businessman and former federal prisoner, was appointed by Pres. Donald Trump (R) as the Deputy Director of the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). Smith was the first ex-prisoner to have held the role (or any leadership position at the BOP). Smith’s tenure, however, did not last long, as he resigned on August 25, a little over a year after joining the agency.
As PLN previously reported, Smith’s criminal history stems from a 1996 arrest in Nashville on charges related to his involvement in a marijuana and cocaine trafficking operation. Smith, along with five co-conspirators, pleaded guilty in 1998; afterward, the government moved to depart from sentencing guidelines for Smith, citing his “substantial assistance” for testifying against his co-defendants. He was fined $12,500 and spent five years in a BOP prison camp in Kentucky. [See: PLN, Jul. 2025, p.26.]
After his release in 2003, Smith went on to found a home services company that he eventually sold for at least $8 million. He then created a nonprofit, the faith-based Fourth Purpose Foundation, which claims to award grants to other nonprofits that provide training to prison and jail guards. Smith also runs an adjacent media company named Prison Life Media. He received a presidential pardon for his drug-related crimes at the end of Trump’s first term in 2021.
Although Smith resigned from the BOP without giving a reason for his departure, he had a tense relationship with other employees at the agency, according to CBS News. While in office, Smith allowed reality TV star Todd Chrisley to visit BOP prisons in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic. Chrisley was found guilty of bank fraud, wire fraud and tax evasion in 2022 and later, like Smith, received a pardon from Trump in 2025, vacating his 12-year prison sentence. Chrisley has used his podcast to call out BOP staff he viewed as behaving improperly, bragging on air that he referred complaints to Smith to get them fired.
In addition to Smith’s relationship with Chrisley, rank-and-file members of the BOP also expressed concerns about how some agency contracts were awarded. In 2025, for example, the BOP partnered with a consulting firm helmed by Anne Precythe, the former director of the Missouri Department of Corrections (DOC) about whom Smith’s nonprofit had created a documentary entitled “Disruptors: Missouri, Anne Precythe.”
Source: CBS News
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