He previously served in government as Deputy Leader of the House of Commons from 2008 to 2009 and Under-Secretary of State for Europe and Asia from 2009 to 2010.

After completing his first degree, Bryant began his training to be a priest in the Church of England at Ripon College Cuddesdon in Oxfordshire.

He served as a curate at the Church of All Saints, High Wycombe from 1986 to 1989 and then as a Youth Chaplain in Peterborough, as well as travelling in Latin America.

[8] At the 1997 general election, Bryant was the Labour candidate for Wycombe, winning 35.4% of the vote and coming second behind the incumbent Conservative MP Ray Whitney.

[9] Bryant's selection for the very safe Labour seat of Rhondda in South Wales in 2000 surprised many people given his background – gay, a former Anglican cleric, and someone who had been a Conservative as a student.

[18][19] On 5 September 2006, with Siôn Simon, he coordinated a prominent letter which was signed by 15 Labour backbenchers calling for Tony Blair's immediate resignation.

[21] On 11 March 2003, as part of an inquiry into Privacy and Press Intrusion by the Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, he asked Rebekah Wade (now Brooks) whether she had ever paid police officers for information.

Bryant had his phone hacked later that year by the News of the World, a fact which became known to the Metropolitan Police when they seized material from the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

[22] Bryant, along with John Prescott and Brian Paddick, sought judicial review of the Metropolitan Police in an attempt to force them to contact all the victims of phone hacking by the News of the World.

[27][28] In October 2010, Bryant stood as one of 49 candidates for election to the 19 places in the Shadow Cabinet in the internal Labour Party poll, receiving 77 votes, 29th position on the list.

In October 2010, Bryant described the coalition government's housing benefit reforms as poorer people "being socially engineered and sociologically cleansed out of London".

[30] Bryant won the Stonewall Politician of the Year Award in 2011 for his work to support equality for lesbian, gay and bisexual people.

[33] Following the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, Bryant told the Commons 'I am afraid that the international response... has thus far been pitiful and spineless.

There has been little honour in the way that Britain, France and the United States, having signed up to the Budapest memorandum, which guaranteed the territorial integrity of Ukraine, now make lots of great speeches but introduce the measliest level of sanctions and targeted interventions against Russian individuals... A Russian friend of mine says that Putin is not yet mad.

[41] He supported Owen Smith in the failed attempt to replace Jeremy Corbyn in the 2016 Labour Party leadership election.

[43] In January 2017, as ex-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Russia, Bryant claimed that the Russian government orchestrated a homophobic campaign to remove him from this position, saying that the Russian government has acquired kompromat on high-profile Conservative Party MPs including Boris Johnson, Liam Fox, Alan Duncan and David Davis.

In November 2017, Bryant called for the arrest[49] of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, if he travels to the United Kingdom, after the President shared a comment on the social media website Twitter from a member of the far-right group Britain First that related to radical Islamic events.

[56] In October 2021, he chaired the Standards Committee's decision on the sanction to be applied to Owen Paterson for breaching lobbying rules relating to paid advocacy which triggered the parliamentary second jobs controversy.

[57] In April 2022, due to having already expressed views about the Partygate scandal, Bryant recused himself from the subsequent investigation by the Privileges Committee into whether Boris Johnson had committed contempt of parliament over statements to the House of Commons concerning alleged parties.

The strategy will be kept under review and revised periodically, to ensure it continues to reflect the priority areas and actions needed to support those living with ABI, and their families.” [59] In December 2021, Bryant told the BBC in an interview that he felt "less physically safe as a gay man than he did 30 years ago."

[60] Bryant campaigned for the UK Government to introduce Magnitsky Sanctions on those who abuse human rights around the world and co-chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on Magnitsky Sanctions with Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP and is a Member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

[63] During a Channel 4 News interview, Bryant admitted he was ordered to filibuster the progress on the SNP's motion for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza – and accepted 'we brought ourselves terribly into disrepute."

[64] Following Bryant's confession, the SNP called for a "full independent investigation" into his comments which they said proved Labour deilberately sought to derail their motion.

MP Kirsty Blackman criticised Bryant's comments claiming: "These damning revelations show Sir Keir Starmer pulled every dirty trick in the Westminster book to wreck the SNP's vote on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Israel.