- J. Alan Nelson played Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey in high school. When his nephew, Henry, played the same role and won best actor in a UIL contest, it inspired Nelson to resume acting.
- Has 2 children with wife Susan.
- Once an avid party crasher, Nelson retired after spending an uninvited hour with President Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and Tipper Gore in 1996.
- During the fall semester of his sophomore year at college, Nelson sold sporting goods to universities, high schools and consumers off the street, waited tables at night, worked as a caretaker in a historic home, transferred the university's book holdings from the Dewey decimal system to the U.S. Library of Congress while checking out books, and sold blood twice a week at a plasma center for cash. He did these money-making activities were done while he carried a class load of 18 hours and ran 10 miles per day.
- J. Alan Nelson's ancestry is Choctaw, German, Jewish, Scottish, French and English.
- At age 10, Nelson was a shoeshine boy in Houston. He still has his homemade shoeshine box.
- J. Alan Nelson wrote an oft-cited treatise in trust and estate law: The Prudent Person Rule: A Shield for the Professional Trustee, 45 Baylor L. Rev. 933, 939 (1993). This work was key in rulings by many courts in the U.S. and worldwide.
- J. Alan Nelson graded the property section of the Texas Bar Exam for five years.
- In third grade, Nelson invented "Purple Urple" which he sold 25 cents for an ounce. Purple Urple was chocolate milk with red and blue food colorings to make a livid plum as glaring as a fresh bruise. He couldn't keep up with demand.
- Nelson's first encounter with the Branch Davidians was when a large man with tics, twitches and involuntary curses regarding AIDS placed the muzzle of an Uzi submachine gun on Nelson's forehead. The man was George Roden, who later was was committed to a Texas institution for the criminally insane after killing a man. "I hear you're running for president," Nelson said. (Roden was). Roden lowered the machine gun, and showed Nelson and his photographer the coffin he'd excavated to challenge rival prophet Vernon Howell (later to be known as David Koresh) to a resurrection face-off.
- J. Alan Nelson's investigation into the Texas private banking system in the 1980s, which was unregulated and existed prior to the Great Depression, uncovered corruption and criminal activity, and ultimately the shutdown of the state's seven private banks.
- J. Alan Nelson wrote a widely read essay called "I Am Outraged, Heather.".
- J. Alan Nelson is related to wilderness pioneer Daniel Boone.
- J. Alan Nelson played the verbose "Silent Alan" in HBO's Emmy-winning SXSWestworld.
- As a journalist on a story, J. Alan Nelson saved the life of Vernon Howell aka David Koresh by taking away the gun of a rival prophet's wife who was attempting to murder him. Nelson regretted that after leaning of Koresh's sexual assaults on minors, which only intensified after the death of many of those children in the Branch Davidian fire. No good deed goes unpunished.
- J. Alan Nelson invented the people spotting game, "Star Kibble," many years ago.
- J. Alan Nelson wrote the short story "Wendell in a Potato.".
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