He was born at Busselton to grazier Donald Norman McLeod and Charlotte Harriett Bussel.
During World War I he served with the 13th Light Horse in Gallipoli and the Middle East.
MacLeod inherited a Western Australian property at Minilya but sold it in 1920, instead running his grandfather's dairy farm and cattle stud at Tyrendarra.
In 1946 he was elected to the Victorian Legislative Council as an independent member for Western Province.
He voted to refuse supply to the McDonald Country Party government in 1952 and was Minister of Agriculture and State Development in the seventy-hour Hollway ministry that resulted.