Judy Barnhard is Co-Founder and Senior Advisor at Councilor Wealth, where she brings decades of integrated tax, financial planning, and wealth advisory experience for high-net-worth individuals and families. She helps clients make confident financial decisions through thoughtful guidance, scenario-based planning, and strategies designed to align their financial resources with their long-term goals.
Judy joined Councilor in 2017 and advises clients on comprehensive financial planning, wealth management, and income tax strategy. She has extensive experience preparing individual income tax returns. As both a Certified Public Accountant and Certified Financial Planner® professional, she helps individuals and families evaluate retirement readiness, manage cash flow and budgeting, assess risk, develop portfolio strategies, and align investment decisions with broader estate, tax, and legacy planning goals.
In addition to working with individuals, Judy has supported Councilor’s audit and assurance team, leading financial statement reviews and audits and preparing business tax returns for not-for-profit organizations, government contractors, and closely held businesses.
Before joining Councilor, Judy spent 26 years as a partner with May & Barnhard, P.C., a Maryland-based tax and financial consulting firm that merged into Councilor in 2017. Through May Barnhard Investments, LLC, she also built experience delivering fee-only financial planning and portfolio management services for individuals, high-net-worth clients, and not-for-profit organizations. Earlier in her career, she served as an experienced accounting and audit manager with a large international accounting firm and as an internal auditor for a Fortune 500 publishing company.
