His parents were Agnes Mercedes (Smith) and John T. Galvin Jr., a wholesale lumber merchant.
[1] He served as an executive officer on board a submarine chaser in both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans during the war.
[2] An avid athlete during his years in college, Galvin took up boxing and enjoyed playing basketball while in the Navy.
[2] Galvin entered the Society of Jesus, a Roman Catholic religious order commonly known as the Jesuits, in August 1948.
[2] He was formally ordained as a Jesuit priest on June 23, 1957, and celebrated his first Mass at St. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church on Calvert Street in Baltimore.
He is credited with changing the way that the university was governed and making it more open and inclusive for both faculty and students.
[1] Galvin taught at Georgetown Prep until the 2006–2007 school year when his health began to rapidly decline due to cancer.
Aloysius C. Galvin died of cancer in the Jesuit community of Georgetown Preparatory School on November 23, 2007, at the age of 82.