Larry Kelley at Ground Zero, 2001

After immigrating from Ireland to Northampton, Massachusetts, the first generation of Kelleys moved across the Connecticut River in 1855 to settle in Amherst. Five generations and one hundred years later, Lawrence J. Kelley was born there. A local businessman, Kelley is one of three owners of the Amherst Athletic Club, and from 1991 to 2004, he was a columnist for the Amherst Bulletin and regular contributor to a number of blogs and discussion lists, offering conservative perspectives on issues affecting the typically liberal Pioneer Valley. He resigned from the Bulletin in 2004, however, after a dispute with the newspaper's editors over the content and direction of his columns. He currently writes a blog Only in the Republic of Amherst on local and national politics.

A long-time participant in civic affairs in Amherst, Kelley ran unsuccessfully for Select Board five times and for the Finance Committee once. He was instrumental in creating laws to stop the flow of illegal martial arts weapons into Massachusetts via the postal service. As a local activist, Larry Kelley has taken on a wide range of other issues, often running again the grain of local majority opinion, taking prominent stands ranging from his opposition to a local high school staging a production of the play the Vagina Monologues to his advocacy for flying the American flag in Amherst. Kelley, his wife Donna, and their daughter, Kiri Li, currently live in Amherst.