[1] His mother, Genie (née LeDoux), is a real estate broker, and his father, Paul Flanery, is a medical equipment salesman.

[7] After graduating college, he decided to move to Los Angeles, California to pursue his career in screenwriting.

He appeared on the TV show The Dead Zone in the role of Vice-President, Greg Stillson, until its cancellation.

Flanery also appeared in an installment of Showtime's Masters of Horror playing a town sheriff who later became one of the antagonistic entity's possessed hosts in the episode "The Damned Thing".

In March 2010 he was cast in the lead role in the sci-fi horror film Mongolian Death Worm.

In April 2011 Flanery headed to the CBS soap The Young and the Restless, playing the part of Sam, Sharon Newman's boyfriend from New Mexico.

Flanery indicated in an interview that, at one point, he considered competing in mixed martial arts, saying "If it didn't come around so late in my life, that would've 100 percent been my trajectory.