He was a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and part of the Dublin Brigade's Active Service Unit.

Bernard, who was affectionately known as Bertie, was recorded with his widowed mother and his two sisters, Katie, and Sarah, in Quarry Lane, Glasnevin, Dublin in the 1911 Census of Ireland.

[3] Ryan, together with Patrick Doyle, Thomas Bryan, and Frank Flood, were tried by Court-martial on 24 February 1921 and convicted of high treason and 'levying war against the King', following an attempted ambush at Drumcondra, Dublin on 21 January 1921.

[4] The four of them, along with Thomas Whelan and Patrick Moran, were hanged at Mountjoy Prison by executioner John Ellis on 14 March 1921, while a crowd of over 20,000 people protested outside.

[4] He is one of a group of men hanged in Mountjoy Prison in the period 1920-1921 commonly referred to as The Forgotten Ten.