John Connolly (FBI) - Biography

Biography

John Joseph Connolly Jr. was the namesake and son of an Irish immigrant John Connolly Sr. known as "Galway John" by friends and neighbors. His father was a Gillette employee for 50 years; his mother Bridget T. Kelly was a housewife. They lived in the Old Harbor housing project on O'Callahan Way until John Jr. was twelve. In 1952 his family moved to the City Point neighborhood of South Boston, Massachusetts. John Jr. was able to attend Columbus High School, a Catholic high school in the Italian North End, Boston neighborhood. John Sr. earned the moniker "Galway John" because he was a second-generation Irish-American from Galway, Ireland in South Boston, Massachusetts. He has a sister, Mary Ann, and one younger brother named James, who would later follow John's footsteps and seek a career in law enforcement, joining the DEA New England Division based in Boston.

As a boy, Connolly would later tell reporters his first memory of James J. Bulger, using his illicit earnings to buy ice cream cones for all the boys that swarmed around him in adoration. He would later answer to the nickname Elvis because of his thick black hair and also to 'Neighbor,' because of his early years of growing up in the projects. He was a neighbor of the Bulger family, Joseph Moakley and Francis 'Buddy' Leonard who would later be murdered by Bulger in 1975 during his battle for power over the rackets.