Tom O'Malley is a Senior Lecturer in Law and a practising barrister specialising in judicial review. He holds three first-class honours degrees from NUI Galway (B.A. in Latin and French, M.A. in Classics and LL.B.) as well as the LL.M. degree from Yale University. He was a graduate fellow at Yale Law School in 1986-1987 and since then has taught at NUI Galway. In 1992-1993, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Criminology Centre at Oxford University, and in spring 2012 a Visiting Professor of Criminology at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He has also taught at the Law Faculty of Paris V University, and has delivered dozens of guest lectures and presentations in Ireland, Britain and continental Europe.

He has taught many different law subjects to degree level over the past 25 years including Constitutional Law, Contract, Land Law, Equity, Criminal Law, Criminology, Administrative Law and Evidence.  He currently offers two courses on the LL.M. (Public Law) programme, one on sentencing and penal policy and the other on criminal process. His main research interests are in the area of criminal law and criminal justice and he is the author of leading Irish treatises on sex offences, sentencing and criminal procedure. He has served on several committees and working groups at national and international level and is at present a member of the Steering Committee for the Irish Sentencing Information System.

He is currently completing a new edition of Sexual Offences: Law Policy and Punishment which was first published in 1996 and is also working on casebook entitled A Common Law of Sentencing.