Timothy J. Sullivan

Timothy Jackson Sullivan was the twenty-fifth president of The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Sullivan’s life has long been intimately linked with William and Mary. He first came to the college as a freshman from Ohio in 1962. He left four years later with an outstanding academic record--bachelor’s degree in government, a Phi Beta Kappa key, and election to a second academic honor society, Omicron Delta Kappa. 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 U.S. Army Signal Corps in Vietnam, where he received the Army Commendation Medal, First Oak Leaf Cluster and Bronze Star. 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.

He became closely associated with the Dean of the Law School, Wulliam Spong, a highly-respected former U.S. Senator from Virginia. In 1972 Spong was defeated by a well-funded Republican candidate after word leaked out that Spong supported the Democratic nominee and peace candidate, George McGovern, for president rather than the Republican candidate Richard Nixon. Nixon had carried Virginia in every election in which he was on the ballot. Spong then became dean of William and Mary's Marshall-Wythe School of Law and presided over its major expansion.

In 1981 and 1982, Sullivan was a visiting law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. He returned to Marshall-Wythe in 1984, as the John Stewart Bryan Professor of Jurisprudence, after serving for nearly three years as executive assistant for policy for then-Governor Charles S. Robb. Observers noted that Robb, whose subsequent record in the U.S. Senate few viewed as strong, never looked better or achieved more support for his decisions than he did when Sullivan was his principal advisor. Sullivan became dean of the Marshall-Wythe School of Law in July 1985. He 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 school's 300th anniversary celebration.

Sullivan's long administration at William and Mary was characterized by a renewed emphasis on undergraduate education, by strong support among students, faculty, and alumni, and by well-thought-out but often bold moves. At the request of other presidents of colleges and universities financially supported by the Commonwealth of Virginia, Sullivan became the spokesman for increases in educational funding and for educational excellence. During the four years of confrontations between Governor James Gilmore and politicians of both parties, Sullivan was one of the most outspoken critics of the tax-cutting Gilmore's approach to education. In that period of budget shortfalls, Sullivan was noted on his campus for quietly transferring money from other college needs to assure that class size and a high quality of undergraduate education continued without interruption at William and Mary.

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 servic, possessed of a family background in public affairs in Ohio, 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. Many observers of Virginia education considered him as one of the best and most courageous college presidents in Virginia's history.

Sullivan 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 served as Chair of the Governing Board of the Virginia Council of University Presidents. Most recently, he has been rumored as a possible candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate (Virginia).

In 2004 he announced his retirement. On July 1, 2005, he was succeeded by Gene R. Nichol, former dean of the law school at the University of North Carolina, and a former member of Sullivan's faculty at William and Mary's law school. On November 1, 2006, Sullivan accepted the position of president and CEO of the historic Mariners' Museum, in Newport News, Virginia.