A businessman and philanthropist in East Tennessee is making history after serving time in prison. He’s now helping oversee the largest prison system in the world.
Plainly put, Josh Smith could be enjoying life with his family on a faraway beach anywhere in the world. Instead, the 51-year-old former felon spends his days on the road visiting a record number of federal prisons and working on reforms within the largest prison system in the world.
“I’ve been to 64 facilities in the first year. There’re people that have been 10 years in this career that have never seen that many prisons,” Smith said while on a recent trip home to East Tennessee during the Memorial Day weekend.
Less than a year ago, Smith accepted the role as deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, calling early skepticism from corrections officers about his title “legitimate.”
“Bringing the business experience into this role is probably one of the most valuable pieces that I bring,” Smith said.
In the last 15 years, Smith turned a small home repair and waterproofing business into a $30 million enterprise with 180 employees, according to his foundation website.
“I’ve done staff recalls at every prison that I go to. I welcome all the staff to come out, and they get to ask me questions or give challenges, and so you’re starting to see that now change to where they understand that I have to invest in them for there to be any success in anywhere else, and so you’re starting to see that shift,” said Smith.
The word unlikely doesn’t begin to describe the Josh Smith story.
Raised by a single mom, he ran away from home several times to escape an abusive stepfather and made his first trip to juvenile custody around 6th grade.
“At the age of 16 is when it really hit. I mean, I had 10 felonies, all burglary and theft … I was the kid that you didn’t want living in your neighborhood,” Smith recalled.
By age 21, he was bound for a Kentucky federal prison on a drug conspiracy conviction. There, he would spend five years behind bars.
Credit: Josh Smith
At 21 years old, Josh Smith went to a Kentucky federal prison for his involvement in marijuana and cocaine trafficking.
“I always make the joke, the federal government did not like my entrepreneurial abilities – and they were really good,” Smith said.
Inside that federal prison, however, Smith said his life was transformed in two significant ways.
First, he said he benefited from the knowledge of fellow inmates locked up for white-collar crimes. They gave him a crash course in setting up legitimate business, real estate and banking deals.
Second, alone inside his cell, he describes feeling a sudden calling to his Christian faith.
“I ended up having an experience with God in prison that changed my life and really changed that path for me in a really big way,” Smith said.
In his mid 20s, he walked out of prison and begged his way into a $6-an-hour job.
Then, within 15 years, he built his multimillion-dollar company and sold it in 2019 to start a nonprofit where he expected to pour all of his remaining resources and attention. Now, Fourth Purpose Foundation works across the country to offer inmates training and skills they can apply when they leave prison walls.
“Most of them are going to be our neighbors again one day,” Smith said.
Credit: Federal Bureau of Prisons
Josh Smith went from federal inmate to federal officer as the second in command of the largest prison system in the world.
He said his goal is to help the almost 95% who will leave the prison system avoid a return trip by cutting a recidivism rate he says hovers at 44% for the federal system.
“My mission statement, my personal why, is to leave a footprint on this earth that won’t soon be erased,” Smith said.
In 2021, Smith received a life-changing phone call from Gov. Bill Lee.
“You can see still today, it’s hard for me to even, I mean, it was a moment in my life,” Smith said, tearing up as he listened to a message he saved on his phone.
Lee had called him to tell him that he had received a full presidential pardon from President Donald Trump, an official act of forgiveness that also restored the civil rights stripped from him after his conviction.
“People ask me, did you pay the president. I never met the president, never knew the president, I’ve never supported the president financially — nothing — it was mercy and grace. (President Trump) had heard about the work that I’ve done … people kept telling the president, ‘Hey, this guy is making a difference,’ ... and so it was the president showed me mercy and grace and gave me a pardon.”
Smith would eventually meet Trump, who personally selected Smith to fill the position of second in command at the Federal Bureau of Prisons. It’s a role Smith said he never expected, but one he now welcomes.
“We have almost 2 million people incarcerated. You can imagine what my story has done for them. So, if nothing else, I hope that young Josh Smith – that’s sitting in prison thinking that this is what their entire life now is going to be defined about – can sit there and say, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, that guy served time in prison, and now he’s leading the largest prison system in the world.’ Maybe I can stop making excuses, and I can start making some changes in my life, and my life will be better for it now.”
You can watch our full interview with Josh Smith by clicking this link.
Author: John Becker, 10 News, NBC Knoxville
Published: May 27, 2026