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.

Cornelius Gallagher represented New Jersey’s 13th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1959 until 1973.

During 2003, a book detailing Gallagher’s side of the story was published.

Cornelius Gallagher’s father, whom was a police officer, died when he was eight. Gallagher started working at a young age as a newsboy, and later a soda jerk.

Gallagher when to St. Mary’s School and Bayonne High School.

He graduated from John Marshall College in 1946.

During 1945 and 1946 he was a member of the faculty of Rutgers University.

Gallagher also attended the John Marshall Law School with an LL.B. in 1948 and engaged in additional studies at New York University in 1948 and 1949. He was admitted to the bar in 1949.

He served in the infantry rifle company in General George S. Patton’s Third Army in Europe in World War II and served from September 1941 until discharged as a captain in November 1946.

During the Korean War, he served one year.

Gallagher was appointed a director of the Broadway National Bank.

He was elected to the Hudson County Board of Chosen Freeholders in 1953, a post he held until resigning in 1956 when he was appointed a 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).

While he served Congress, he served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Committee on Government Operations.

Subsequently, he became vice president of Baron/Canning International in New York City, and was a resident of the Columbia section of Knowlton Township, New Jersey.

Gallagher passed away at 97 years old.