He received a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, from the College of the Holy Cross in 1976 and a Juris Doctor from the University of Connecticut School of Law in 1979.

[3] On May 4, 2011, President Barack Obama nominated Droney to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to replace Judge Guido Calabresi, who assumed senior status in 2009.

[8] As a United States District Judge, Droney presided over such matters as a multi-district class action involving RICO and fraud charges in the national food service industry,[9] the first sex trafficking criminal jury trial under the then-new federal child sex trafficking statutes,[10] and the return of the famous television puppet Howdy Doody from private parties to the museum at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

[11] While on the Court of Appeals, Droney authored the Ragbir opinion,[12] which held that immigrants could not be deported in retaliation for their protected First Amendment speech, and Littlejohn v. City of New York,[13] which eased the pleading standard for federal employment discrimination claims.

Droney also joined in the Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump opinion,[15] which held that the President's Twitter account was a First Amendment-protected public forum and the President could not block unfavorable comments from that account, the panel opinion in CREW v. Trump,[16] which held that the suit could proceed against President Trump for violation of the Constitution's emoluments clause for his profits from his hotels and restaurants, as well as the Vance v. Trump opinion,[17] which held that the President's personal tax returns were not immune from production in response to a state grand jury subpoena.