The Texas Attorney General is the chief legal and law enforcement officer of the State of Texas.

The department has offices at the William P. Clements State Office Building at 300 West 15th Street in Austin.

The Office of the Attorney General was first established by executive ordinance of the Republic of Texas government in 1836. The attorneys general of the Republic of Texas and the first four attorneys general under the 1845 state constitution were appointed by the governor. The office was made elective in 1850 by constitutional amendment.

The attorney general is elected to a four-year term. The current 49th attorney general of Texas is Greg Abbott (Republican), in office since December 2, 2002. Abbott was re-elected in 2006 and 2010 and as of September 8, 2011, he is the longest-serving Attorney General in Texas history.

The attorney general is charged by the state constitution to defend the laws and constitution of Texas, represent the state in litigation, and approve public bond issues.

Texas (ⁱ/ˈtɛksəs/) (Alibamu: Teksi ) is the second most populous and the second most extensive of the 50 United States, and the most extensive state of the 48 contiguous United States. The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in East Texas. Located in the South Central United States, Texas shares an international border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south, and borders the US states of New Mexico to the west, Oklahoma to the north, Arkansas to the northeast, and Louisiana to the east. Texas has an area of 268,820 square miles (696,200 km²), and a growing population of 25.7 million residents.

During the Spanish colonial rule, the area was officially known as the Nuevo Reino de Filipinas: La Provincia de Texas. Antonio Margil de Jesús was known to be the first person to use the name in a letter to the Viceroy of Mexico in July 20, 1716. The name was not popularly used in daily speech but often appeared in legal documents until the end of the 1800s.

In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general is the main legal advisor to the government, and in some jurisdictions he or she may also have executive responsibility for law enforcement or responsibility for public prosecutions.

The term is used to refer to any person who holds a general power of attorney to represent a principal in all matters. In the common law tradition, anyone who represents the state, especially in criminal prosecutions, is such an attorney. Although a government may designate some official as the permanent attorney general, anyone who comes to represent the state in the same way is referred to as such, even if only for a particular case.

In Australia the Attorney-General is the chief law officer of the Crown and a member of the Cabinet. The Attorney-General is the minister responsible for legal affairs, national and public security and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. Nicola Roxon is the current Attorney-General.

The Australian states each have an Attorney-General, who is a state minister with similar responsibilities to the federal minister with respect to state law.

Gregory Wayne "Greg" Abbott(born November 13, 1957) is the Texas Attorney General, and is the second Republican since Reconstruction to serve in that role. Abbott was sworn in on December 2, 2002, following John Cornyn's election to the U.S. Senate. Prior to assuming the office of attorney general, Abbott was a justice on the Texas Supreme Court, a position to which he was initially appointed in 1995 by then-Governor George W. Bush. He is noted outside the state of Texas for successfully defending the right of the state of Texas to display the Ten Commandments in front of the state Capitol in Austin in a 2005 United States Supreme Court case known as Van Orden v. Perry.

Abbott was born in Wichita Falls and was raised in Duncanville (Dallas County). He and his wife, Cecilia P. Abbott, a former school teacher and principal, were married in 1982. They have a daughter named Audrey (born 1997).

After his graduation from the University of Texas in Austin, with a B.B.A. in finance, he received his law degree from the Vanderbilt University Law School in Nashville, Tennessee.

Vincent Waggoner Carr (October 1, 1918 - February 25, 2004) was a Democratic Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and Attorney General of Texas.

Carr was born to Vincent Carr (1892–1983) and the former Ruth Warlick (1897–1985) in Fairlie in Hunt County east of Dallas. In 1932, when the family bank in Fairlie closed, the Carrs moved to Lubbock just in time for Carr to graduate from Lubbock High School in 1936. The senior Carr found work at Stubbs Feed Seed Company and decided that he wanted his sons to attend college. As a youth, Carr worked as a farm hand, magazine salesman and theater usher.

In 1940, he completed his bachelor of business administration degree at Texas Tech University (then Texas Technological College) in Lubbock. Although he immediately began his legal studies after Texas Tech, Carr did not graduate from the University of Texas at Austin law school until 1947. The delay came from his service in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a pilot during World War II.

After they obtained their legal credentials, Carr and his brother, M. Warlick Carr (1921–2008), established a law office in Lubbock. In 1948, Carr was appointed assistant district attorney for the 72nd Judicial District in Lubbock. He was also the elected county attorney for Lubbock County from 1949 to 1951.