Timothy J. Sullivan
Twenty-Fifth President, William & Mary
Timothy J. Sullivan first came to the College of William and Mary as a freshman in 1962. He left four years later with a bachelor’s degree in government, a Phi Beta Kappa key and membership in Omicron Delta Kappa.
Mr. Sullivan was elected president of the College on April 9, 1992 by the Board of Visitors and was sworn in as president on June 1, just eight months before the College began its 300th anniversary celebration.
Sullivan's life has been intimately linked with William and Mary. His wife, Anne Doubet Klare, was a fellow member of the class of 1966. Like other William and Mary alumni, they were married in the chapel of the Sir Christopher Wren Building.
After receiving a law degree from Harvard University in 1969, Sullivan went on to serve in the Army Signal Corps in Vietnam, where he received the Army Commendation Medal, First Oak Leaf Cluster and Bronze Star.
Mr. Sullivan came back to William and Mary in 1972 as an assistant professor at the Marshall-Wythe School of Law where he specialized in teaching contract law. He rose quickly, becoming an associate law professor in 1974, then full professor and associate dean in 1977.
In 1981 and 1982, he was visiting law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. He served for nearly three years as executive assistant for policy for then-Governor Charles S. Robb. Sullivan returned to Marshall-Wythe in 1984, as the John Stewart Bryan Professor of Jurisprudence. He became dean of the law school in July 1985. He is a member of the Virginia State Bar and the Ohio State Bar and a Fellow of the Virginia Bar Foundation and the American Bar Foundation, and he currently serves as Chair of Governing Board, Council of Presidents.
Mr. Sullivan was given the Freedom of the Drapers' Company in London in November 1992 and was installed as a member of the Livery in July, 2003. In April 1993 he received an LLD (hon.) from the University of Aberdeen. He received the Outstanding Virginian Award from the Virginia 4-H Foundation in 1999.
Active in public service, Sullivan has been executive director of the Governor's Commission on Virginia's Future, counsel for the Commission on the Future of the Virginia Judicial System, a member of the Virginia Board of Education and the Governor's Task Force on Substance Abuse and Sexual Assault on Campus. In addition, he was appointed by Governor L. Douglas Wilder as chair of the Governor's Task Force on Intercollegiate and Interscholastic Athletics. President Sullivan served as chair of the Council of Presidents for 1998 and 1999.
