He was Minister of Foreign Affairs in the government of Francisco García Calderón, during the Chilean occupation in the middle of the War of the Pacific, being arrested and confined in Chile together with said president for refusing to sign peace with territorial cession (1881).

He was also a representative and senator of the Republic, and prosecutor of the Supreme Court, as well as professor of Civil Law and dean of the Faculty of Jurisprudence of the National University of San Marcos.

Born to a prominent family of Spanish descent, he was the son of colonel José Manuel Gálvez Paz and María Micaela Egúsquiza y Aristizábal.

[8][9] He was later elected to Celendín, a position he held from 1876 to 1879, during the government of Mariano Ignacio Prado, until the coup perpetrated by Nicolás de Piérola, in the middle of the War of the Pacific.

[2] After the occupation of Lima by the Chilean Army in January 1881, he participated in the Board of Notables that supported Francisco García Calderón in his election as provisional president.

[4] One of his most important tasks was to resist Chilean pressure for Peru to sign peace with territorial cession and extensive compensation, for which it was not long before he suffered reprisals from the invader.

[2][5][18] In 1884 he was part, as a representative of Quispicanchi, of the Constituent Assembly[19] called by President Miguel Iglesias after the signing of the Treaty of Ancón, the same one that put an end to the war.

[22] He was dean of the Lima Bar Association (1885-1886)[23] and, with the reinstatement of democracy in the first government of Andrés Avelino Cáceres, he was elected senator for the department of Cajamarca, a position he held from 1886 to 1887.