As mayor, Donnell lowered the city's tax rate and launched a $700,000 highway and sidewalk construction project.
[1] In 1919, Donnell was elected Essex County District Attorney after he upset incumbent DA Henry G. Wells in the Republican primary.
In 1932 he represented the stockholders of the defunct Salem Trust Company in equity proceedings brought by the state bank commissioner.
[7] The case went to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, where justice John Crawford Crosby entered a final decree ordering the bank's officers and directors to pay the institution's obligations with interest.
[9] In 1933, Donnell and Bart J. Ronan represented Dr. Harris S. Pomeroy, a physician who attended to Peabody firefighter William J. Costello before his unexpected death.
[13] The auction of city hall was avoided when Mayor Joseph B. O'Keefe ordered the judgment to be paid off.
[17] He ran as a write-in candidate for the Republican nomination in that year's election, but lost in the primary to Washington Cook.