[3][4][5][6][7] Hill was born in New York and attended The Buckley School and Milton Academy, where he was a varsity wrestler.
Filmmaker Oliver Stone used J. Tomilson Hill as one of several inspirations for the character Gordon Gekko, portrayed by Michael Douglas in the 1987 movie, Wall Street.
Barbarians at the Gate, the best-selling book chronicling that saga, described Hill as “an oiled-back Gordon Gekko haircut atop 5 feet, 10 inches of icy Protestant reserve.”[10][11] In 1993 Hill joined Blackstone, where he served as co-head of the corporate mergers and acquisitions advisory group.
Hill has appeared at the 2014 Credit Suisse Financial Services Forum, the 2011 Milken Institute Global Conference, and the 2012 Bloomberg Hedge Fund Summit, among others.
[12] In the spring of 2021, it was announce that Hill would become chairman of private investments at Two Sigma, a 'quant' hedge fund with $58 billion in assets under management.