10 Notable alumni of Georgetown College

Alphonsus J. Donlon SJ was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who spent his career in priestly ministry and academia, including as president of Georgetown University from 1912 to 1918. Born in Albany, New York, he garnered a reputation as a good student and an exceptional collegiate athlete. As a professor, he went on to lead Georgetown University's sports program,...

Solomon Hillen Jr. was a U.S. representative from Maryland and mayor of Baltimore.

John McElroy SJ was a Jesuit priest who founded Catholic schools in the United States. After immigrating to the United States in 1803, McElroy enrolled in Georgetown University in 1806, the same year in which he joined the Society of Jesus as a lay brother. His brother Anthony also became a Jesuit. McElroy assumed the management of Georgetown's financial affairs....

Edward Kavanagh was a United States representative and the 17th governor of Maine. Born in Newcastle in the Massachusetts District of Maine to Irish Catholic immigrants from County Wexford. He later attended Montreal Seminary (in Quebec, Canada) and Georgetown College in Washington. He graduated from St. Mary's College (Baltimore) in 1813. He studied law, was admitted to the bar and...

Fernando E. Rodríguez Vargas, was an odontologist (dentist), scientist and a Major in the U.S. Army who discovered the bacteria which causes dental caries.

John Joseph DeGioia is an American academic administrator and philosopher who served as the president of Georgetown University from 2001 to 2024. He was the first lay president of the school and its longest-serving president. Upon his appointment, he also became the first lay president of any Jesuit university in the United States. Having spent his entire career at Georgetown,...

William Matthews, occasionally spelled Mathews, was an American who became the fifth Roman Catholic priest ordained in the United States and the first such person born in British America. Born in the colonial Province of Maryland, he was briefly a novice in the Society of Jesus. After being ordained, he became influential in establishing Catholic parochial and educational institutions in...

William Bourke Cockran, commonly known as Bourke Cockran or Burke Cochran in contemporary reports, was an Irish-American attorney, Democratic Party politician and orator who represented the East Side of Manhattan in the United States House of Representatives for seven non-consecutive terms between 1887 and 1923. An outspoken proponent of progressive taxation and government intervention, Cockran frequently critiqued the unchecked nature...

Antonin Gregory Scalia was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. He was described as the intellectual anchor for the originalist and textualist position in the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative wing. For catalyzing an originalist and textualist movement in American law, he has...