Born in 1938, Tom grew up in South Philadelphia. He attended St. Joseph's Prep, Philadelphia's Jesuit high school, and the University of Notre Dame, both on academic scholarships. After graduating magna cum laude from Notre Dame in 1960, Tom joined the Jesuits, where he spent most of the next eighteen years. Along the way he was ordained a priest in 1970; acquired graduate degrees in philosophy, English, theology, and law; taught in high school, college, and law school; helped to edit the Jesuit magazine America; clerked for a federal judge; and served as staff counsel for a congressional committee investigating the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Tom left the Jesuits and the priesthood in 1978. Shortly thereafter he married Ann Dunleavy, having first met her on a blind date when they were college freshmen in 1956. Tom then worked as an attorney in private practice, served as general counsel to a government relations firm, and eventually entered on a seventeen-year career as an appellate attorney in the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, during which time he argued approximately 65 cases before federal circuit courts of appeals. Following his retirement from the Department of Justice in 2007, he took a long-delayed plunge into the fine arts, which culminated in a solo 2012 show of 54 paintings and drawings at the Yellow Barn Studio and Gallery in Glen Echo, Maryland. Finally, after writing millions of words of dubious aesthetic value as a journalist and attorney, he began to write poetry seriously in 2013. His first volume of poetry, Food for a Journey, received a 2016 Book Excellence Award for Poetry. Tom and Ann live in Bethesda, Maryland. Their two grown children, Mark and Kate, live in the Washington, D.C. area, where both are attorneys. Kate and her husband, Devin Maroney, have a daughter, Claire, Tom and Ann's first grandchild.
