It was discovered on 15 October 1985, by American astronomer Edward Bowell at Lowell's Anderson Mesa Station near Flagstaff, Arizona, in the United States.

[3] It is, however, a non-family asteroid from the main belt's background population when applying the hierarchical clustering method to its proper orbital elements.

[8] In December 2012, a rotational lightcurve of Kennedy was obtained from photometric observations in the R-band by astronomers at the Palomar Transient Factory in California.

[7] According to the survey carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, Kennedy measures 5.129 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of 0.267,[5][6] while the Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes an albedo of 0.21 and calculates a diameter of 4.42 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 14.08.

[3] This minor planet was named in memory of Malcolm Kennedy (1944–1997), secretary of the Astronomical Society of Glasgow.