Townsend attended each Republican National Convention from 1912 to 1960. From 1916 to 1962, he served on the state party’s executive committee. He was the state party’s vice chairman from 1920 to 1928 and the national committeeman for thirty-three years, 1928 to 1961. During the Warren G. Harding administration, Townsend was named registrar of the U.S. land office at Little Rock from 1922 to 1924. The Hoover administration named him United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, a patronage appointment that he held from 1930 to 1934, when he was replaced in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. Townsend's career at times paralleled that of another veteran Little Rock attorney, Osro Cobb, a member of the Arkansas House of Representatives from 1927 to 1931 for Montgomery County. Cobb served as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas in the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration.