[3] Harutyunyan was born on 11 November 1974, in Badara, then a part of the Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast in the Azerbaijan SSR.

His father, Anatoli Harutyunyan, was vice-principal and mathematics teacher at a local school, while his mother, Svetlana Arushanyan, worked as a nurse.

In 1999, he entered the Mikhailovskaya Artillery Military Academy in Saint Petersburg under the Ministry of Defense of the Russia Federation, from which he graduated with honors.

[8] On 27 October 2020, the president of Artsakh announced that Harutyunyan was relieved of his position after being wounded in fighting, replacing him with Mikael Arzumanyan.

[2] On 2 September 2022, the Investigative Committee of Armenia announced that a criminal case had been opened against Jalal Harutyunyan on two counts of “careless attitude towards military service” during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war.