We present a novel mobility management scheme for the Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks, where a part of mobility management tasks is transferred from the mobile core network (i.e., Evolved Packet Core (EPC)) to the backhaul network. In this approach, a part of inter-eNodeB handovers of user equipments (UEs) are managed by control nodes in the backhaul in contrast to the standard LTE, where such handovers are exclusively handled by the EPC. For this purpose, we utilize the concept of software-defined networking (SDN) and OpenFlow protocol to realize control nodes for the backhaul network, which facilitate implementation of sophisticated traffic management schemes. We present the architecture and associated protocols, and evaluate the performance gains and scalability of our proposed scheme. We find that the proposed scheme considerably reduces the mobility-related signaling load to EPC. Additionally, the use of SDN/OpenFlow eliminates the need for conventional mobility tunnels, which results in improving the efficiency of data transport in the network. © 2013 IEEE.