Ford graduated from the Cincinnati Country Day School and received his bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1989.

[4] Ford served as an intelligence officer in the United States Navy Reserve during 1994–2011, receiving an honorable discharge at the rank of Lieutenant Commander in December 2011.

In August 2008, Ford left the Executive Branch to become a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington, DC think tank founded in 1961 by nuclear strategist Herman Kahn.

Shortly thereafter, Ford revised the letter to say he was resigning immediately, saying he was unable to "serve in an administration at a time in which some are willing to condone, or even to incite, violent insurrection against the country I hold dear and whose Constitution I have taken a sacred oath to support and defend.

With the Israeli scholar Amichai Cohen, he also edited a book assessing international and domestic legal issues related to counter-terrorism a decade after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.