Thomas E. Connolly (1918-2002) was a literary critic and professor in the University at Buffalo Department of English. Born in New York City, he graduated from Fordham University and served with the U.S. Army from 1942-46. In 1948 he married the Mary Gould and attended graduate school at the University of Chicago, where he received an M.A. and Ph.D. Connelly taught at Chicago's Loyola University, the University of Idaho and Creighton University in Omaha before joining the UB faculty in 1953. He chaired the UB Faculty Senate in the late 1960s during the years of campus unrest.

Connelly's critical essays in English and American literature appeared widely in scholarly journals, and he wrote and edited several books on James Joyce. Among them are The Personal Library of James Joyce: A Descriptive Bibliography, published by the University of Buffalo in 1955 and republished in 1957 and 1974; James Joyce's Scribbledehobble: The Ur-Workbook for Finnegans Wake (Northwestern University Press, 1961), and Joyce's Portrait: Criticisms and Critiques(Appleton, 1962).