Thomas Kennelly, ’54

Retired from Intertel-an investigative services firm

In the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, when Thomas A. Kennelly ’54 practiced criminal law, his cases made national news. Today they’re chronicled in history books.

Now retired, Kennelly says his career of locking up mobsters and defending federal agents was the fulfillment of a dream: "I wanted to be a trial lawyer ever since I was in high school." Raised in the Midwest, Kennelly longed to live in California, he says. The summer of his junior year at Minnesota’s St. Thomas University, he hitchhiked to the Golden State and toured law schools at the University of San Francisco, UCLA, U.C. Berkeley, U.C. Hastings and Stanford among other campuses, but that fall he applied to only one law school: Santa Clara University School of Law.

Dean Edwin Owens’ encouragement, SCU’s "convivial and congenial atmosphere" and the faculty’s concern for their students determined his choice, Kennelly says. The school’s small classes were also a draw. Twelve students comprised Kennelly’s graduating class of 1954, he says.

After law school, the U.S. Marine Corps drafted Kennelly, assigning him to his first legal post, JAG officer. Kennelly’s mandatory service term ended in 1957, but he continued working for the military as a civilian lawyer for the U.S. Air Force, negotiating procurement contracts for "everything from jet engines to ice cream" while living in Chateau Roux, France. "I’ve never lived so well before or since," says Kennelly of his time overseas.

The cushy job, however, did not provide the thrilling trial lawyer lifestyle Kennelly had envisioned for himself. In search of excitement, he returned to California in 1961 to become a federal prosecutor in San Francisco. "Then life became interesting," he says.

Kennelly had occupied his new position for less than two years, when a Marine Corps buddy at the Department of Justice enticed him to move to Washington, D.C. and join the agency’s Rackets Committee, commonly known as Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s "Get Hoffa" Squad. The legal team gathered enough evidence against Jimmy Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to indict the labor union leader on charges of jury tampering and theft of Teamster pensions.

The squad’s success earned Kennelly a promotion to chief of Justice’s strike force combating organized crime. The loan sharking operations, illegal gambling rackets and drug trafficking rings Kennelly and his colleagues shut down "were a particular concern in the ’60s," says Kennelly, "[Criminal organizations] were beginning to infiltrate legitimate companies." To encourage Mafia informants to testify, Kennelly invented the federal witness relocation program. "It was an experiment," Kennelly says of the program, "but it was successful."

When Kennelly resigned from the Department of Justice in 1971 to start a private practice in white-collar crime defense, an early client was a central figure in one of the most infamous scandals in the history of the U.S. presidency. After accepting G. Gordon Liddy’s case and hearing the former FBI bureau supervisor’s version of the government-sanctioned Watergate Hotel break-ins, Kennelly says he realized the magnitude of the crime. "I remember telling my wife, ‘This thing isn’t going to go away any time soon,’" he says.

Though Kennelly left private practice in 1985 to join Intertel, an investigative services firm, he didn’t stray far from the public eye. As vice president of the company, he headed a six-week, on-site investigation of the 1984 Union Carbide Corporation tragedy in Bhopal, India. Accurately assessing the number of people injured and lives lost due to a gas leak at the Union Carbide chemical plant was impossible says Kennelly. "When 3,000 people descend on a 300-bed hospital, you don’t stop to fill out paperwork."

Kennelly retired from Intertel and the practice of law in 1990 and moved to Napa Valley in 1994 with Susan, his wife of 42 years. Since his retirement, he has earned a master’s degree in liberal arts from Georgetown University and written an autobiography, One More Story and I’m Out the Door: A Life, With Recollections About Jimmy Hoffa, the Mafia, G. Gordon Liddy, and Guardian Angels, Among Others.

He began writing One More Story in 2002, Kennelly says, with the intention of creating a legacy for his three children and two grandchildren and a guide for anyone considering a career as a trial lawyer. In 2005, he self published the 386-page memoir, which is available at iUniverse.com and can be ordered through any bookseller. "To my surprise," says Kennelly, "people are taking an interest in it."