Thomas Jerome Curran was born on November 28, 1898 in New York City, New York, United States. He was the son of Daniel Jerome Curran and Margaret Mary Connors. Both parents had emigrated from County Kerry, Ireland. When Tom Curran was twelve, his father, a stevedore, died in a pier accident.
Curran graduated from Xavier High School in 1916. He interrupted his studies at Fordham University in 1918 to serve as an army instructor with the rank of second lieutenant. After receiving the B. A. from Fordham in 1920, Curran taught at Xavier while earning an L. L. B. at Fordham (1923). In 1935 he received the J. S. D. degree from St. John's University.
After being admitted to the New York bar in 1924, he worked for the State Insurance Fund for two years.
In 1928, Curran became an assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, in which post began a lifelong friendship with a young colleague, Thomas E. Dewey. During three years of federal service, Curran prosecuted two important cases: the Dachis case, dealing with arson and mail fraud, and the Cotter-Butte Mines mail-fraud case, which helped spark the Seabury investigations of 1930 and 1931 that dethroned Mayor James J. Walker and rocked the foundations of Tammany Hall.
In 1931 Curran returned to private practice, became a partner in Blake, Stim, and Curran, and embarked upon his political career.
While at Fordham he had predicted that he would succeed Charles Francis Murphy as leader of Tammany Hall, not an unreasonable expectation for a dedicated young man raised in the Irish political fiefdom of Greenwich Village. Yet when he first ran unsuccessfully for the Board of Aldermen from the Tenth Aldermanic District in 1931, it was as a Republican. Perhaps the timing was crucial in his choice of parties. Murphy's successor in Tammany was George W. Olvany, a Greenwich Village politician whose public pronouncement "The Irish are natural leaders . .. . Even the Jewish districts have Irish leaders. The Jews want to be ruled by them" did not sit well with the Jews, Italians, and others in the city, and embarrassed many Irish as well. Olvany's tenure came to a forced end in 1929, an occurrence that signaled internal revolt within Tammany. The Seabury investigations exposed the corruption of Tammany, and Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt's attack on Walker and on Tammany threw the organization into further disarray. In any case, Curran ran again, successfully, for alderman in 1933 and in 1935 became minority leader of the Board of Aldermen. He served until 1937.
Noting that most district leaders opposed La Guardia as an ingrate, Curran denounced him as the "most artful political dodger" the city ever had known. He supported instead Judge Jonah J. Goldstein, a Tammany Democrat, until almost the eve of the nomination. While continuing as county leader, Curran served from 1942 through 1954 as secretary of state during the governorship of his old friend Dewey. He rationalized state regulatory legislation, especially in the licensing of various professions, and pioneered the first statewide committee to oversee real estate brokerage and sales transactions.
In 1944, Curran made his only bid for national office, challenging Robert F. Wagner, the popular incumbent, for the Senate.
Running as much against the Political Action Committee of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and communism as against Wagner, Curran lost badly after a campaign tainted by ethnic and religious overtones. Few questioned Curran's basic integrity, although some doubted his statesmanship. La Guardia praised him as a "good alderman" but supported Wagner, a "great United States Senator. " With less charity a local newspaper supporting Dewey for president criticized the bespectacled, scholarly-looking Curran as "one who is personally as colorless as dishwater, and whose political record of achievement matches that dubious distinction. "
Shortly before his death he faced mounting opposition to his county leadership role, signified particularly in his failure to keep the party from endorsing Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. , whom the Democrats had refused to support for Congress.
He died in New York City.
Curran proved an able guide through the thicket of conciliation politics that characterized relationships between Democrats and Republicans in city and county affairs. Like his counterparts at Tammany Hall (most notably Carmine De Sapio, with whom he often cooperated), Curran usually put the interests of his organization ahead of ideology.
In 1945, having vigorously supported Fiorello La Guardia for mayor four years earlier, he worked just as hard to wilt the "Little Flower. "
Long known for his anti-Soviet stance, Curran tried to paint Wagner as an out-of-date "stooge of the New Deal" and a dangerous radical.
Although he never achieved national prominence, his staying power as a city and state leader of the Republicans, a party notorious for internal shifts and shambles, attested Curran's aptitude as a professional politician.
He was a member of the New York State Republican Committee for several years.
On June 26, 1926, he married Margaret Frances Farley; they had two sons.
