The Detention Center
Galveston County Jail
- Operated byGalveston County Sheriff's Office, Corrections Division
- County publishes a jail nameYes — 'Galveston County Jail' on the Sheriff's Corrections page
- Jail address5700 Avenue H, Galveston, TX 77551
- Jail phone(409) 766-2315
- VisitationRegistration through gettingout.com; no rates published
- Beds and population, 2026-081,126 people held in 1,223 rated beds
Source: Galveston County Sheriff — Corrections · checked 2026-08-22
Transparency rating
4/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✗Deaths in custody — not published
- ✗PREA audits — not published
- ✗Independent inspection — not published
- ✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
- ✓How to post bond
- ✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds1,223 rated capacity (TCJS Inmate Population Report, 1 August 2026; 1,126 held, 92% of capacity)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Jimmy Fullen
- OfficeGalveston County Sheriff's Office
- Background published35+ years law enforcement; Texas City PD; Chief of Police, Galveston ISD
- DivisionsCorrections; Office of Professional Standards
- Jail phone(409) 766-2315
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Galveston County Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-08-22
The Judges
Two county pages disagree on two benches: the District Attorney's county-and-district courts directory lists the 56th as 'O.A. Cox' and the 306th as 'Anne B. Darring', while the Judicial District Courts page lists Lonnie Cox and Emily A. Fisher. The Judicial District Courts page is used above; the 122nd, 212th and 405th names come only from the DA directory.
County Judge
- Mark Henry
County Courts at Law
- John Grady (No. 1)
- Kerri Foley (No. 2)
- Jack Ewing (No. 3)
Probate Court
- Kim Sullivan
District Courts
- Rebecca Millo (10th)
- Lonnie Cox (56th)
- Jeth Jones (122nd)
- Patricia Grady (212th)
- Emily A. Fisher (306th)
- Jared Robinson (405th)
Justices of the Peace
- Gregory L. Rikard (Pct. 1)
- D. Blake Apffel (Pct. 2)
- Kathleen McCumber (Pct. 3)
- Billy Williams (Pct. 4)
- The county's bond schedule
- Share of the jail population held pretrial
- Median time from booking to first appearance
Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-08-22
The County Commissioners
They pay for the jail. The sheriff runs it.
- What they controlThe detention budget, the building itself, and the agreements that let other agencies rent its beds.
- What they don'tDay-to-day operations. The sheriff is separately elected and answers to voters, not to the board.
- The boardBoard of County Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The Sheriff's Office runs a separate site (sheriff.galvestoncountytx.gov) from the county site; the jail name and address appear only there.
- The Personal Bond Office publishes the personal bond fee — 3% of the amount ordered by the magistrate — and accepted payment methods.
- Adopted budgets are published FY2021–FY2026 in PDF and raw Excel.
- The county publishes no in-custody population count, no PREA audit, no death-in-custody report and no inter-agency housing contract or rate on its own sites.
- Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Darrell Apffel (Pct. 1), Joe Giusti (Pct. 2), Hank Dugie (Pct. 3), Robin Armstrong (Pct. 4).
- County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats
The record
22 people have died in the Galveston County jail since 2017.
Deaths: Texas Justice Initiative, the cleaned copy of the Texas Attorney General’s custodial death reports — the state’s own public index carries no cause of death and has not been refreshed since August 2025. Population: Texas Commission on Jail Standards monthly report. Counted, not estimated.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Galveston County and what it costs the people who live here. Nationally, almost 77% of the people who died in local jails in 2019 had not been convicted of anything, and suicide was the leading single cause of those deaths (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000–2019).
How much is your sheriff — and your judge — costing you?
Your VOTE is POWERFUL.
The sheriff who runs this jail is elected. So are the commissioners who pay for it.
Names verified 2026-08-22 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered