Roy Laurence Donley (January 15, 1885 – September 24, 1939) was a businessman who became a member of the Berkeley, California, Board of Park Commissioners and then the Los Angeles City Council, from 1931 to 1933.

[1] Donley died of an apoplectic stroke in his home, 3516 West 25t Street on September 24, 1939, at the age of fifty-four.

[2][3] In 1931, Donley ran for election in Los Angeles City Council District 5 against the incumbent, Virgil A. Martin and six other candidates, including newspaper editor Byron B. Brainard.

The next year, Donley ran for the Democratic nomination for Congress in the district held by Republican William I. Traeger but lost.

Donley voiced his suspicion during a council meeting that the Board of Public Works was discriminating against men of Irish descent in placement for jobs.

In the depth of the Great Depression, Donley urged that new taxes be levied on such things as gasoline, theaters, wrestling matches, dances, checks drawn on Los Angeles banks, soft drinks, cosmetics and tobacco to provide a fund to get the city through the winter.

Donley was a staunch opponent of opening and widening 10th Street, which later became Olympic Boulevard, and he submitted an unsuccessful resolution to kill the project.