Cornelius Edward “Neil” Gallagher was born on March 2, 1921, in Bayonne, New Jersey and died on October 17, 2018.
He was an American Democratic Party politician.
Gallagher represented New Jersey’s 13th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1959-1973.
Cornelius’s father, a police officer, died when he was eight.
Cornelius Edward Gallagher started working at a young age as a newsboy, and later a soda jerk.
Gallagher attended St. Mary’s School and Bayonne High School and graduated from John Marshall College in 1946; in 1945 and 1946 he was a member of the faculty of Rutgers University.
In 1948, Gallagher also graduated from John Marshall Law School with an LL.B., and engaged in additional studies at New York University in 1948 and 1949. Gallagher was admitted to the bar in 1949.
In World War II, he was a commander of an infantry rifle company in General George S. Patton’s Third Army in Europe and served from September 1941 until discharged as a captain in November 1946.
Gallagher served one year in the Korean War
He also served as a director of the Broadway National Bank, and was elected to the Hudson County Board of Chosen Freeholders in 1953, a post he held until resigning in 1956, when he was appointed commissioner of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority.
He was also a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions of 1952, 1956 and 1960.
Gallagher was elected as a Democrat to the Eighty-sixth through Ninety-second Congresses (January 3, 1959 – January 3, 1973).
During his time in Congress, Gallagher served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Committee on Government Operations.
Cornelius Edward Gallagher died at 97 years old.