He was born John Hope, the third son of Sir Thomas Hope, 4th Baronet of Craighall by his wife Anne, daughter and heiress of Sir William Bruce, 1st Baronet of Kinross.
[1] He succeeded his elder brothers in the Hope baronetcy and in their mother's estate of Kinross, assuming the additional surname of Bruce.
He sat in Parliament as Member for Kinross-shire from 1727 to 1734 and from 1741 to 1747; he was hereditary sheriff of the county from about 1715 until the Heritable Jurisdictions Act.
Bruce Hope married firstly Charlotte, daughter of Sir Charles Halkett, 1st Baronet of Pitfirrane; they had no children.
Their only surviving child, Anne, who married Thomas Williamson at Edinburgh in 1774, did not inherit the Kinross estates, which instead went to the descendants of Bruce Hope's mother by her second husband, Sir John Carstairs of Kilconquhar.