Born at Walhalla, Victoria, to lawyer Thomas O'Loghlen Reynolds and Jane Mary Hutchinson, he attended Coburg State School and then Carlton College where he matriculated in 1908 top of his class.
On leaving school, he went to Trinity College, at the University of Melbourne, where he won the Henry Berthon Scholarship in December 1909 for the 1910 academic year and received his Bachelor of Law in 1913.
As a member of the Trinity College Dialectic Society he gained a reputation as a keen and capable debater.
"[1] Reynolds was called to the bar in 1915 but in that year enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force, serving until 1919 as a subaltern in France and Belgium.
In 1948 he was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly in a by-election for the seat of Toorak as a representative of the Liberal Party, after the death of Robert Bell Hamilton.