Gormley grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and received his B.A from the University of Pittsburgh in political science in 1972. In 1976, he received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, also in political science. He then taught at the State University of New York and the University of Wisconsin, from 1980 to 1990. In 1991, Gormley became a Professor of Government and Public Policy at Georgetown University, where he still teaches. Gormley's wife is a professor at George Mason University, and he has a stepson and a daughter.

Books

• Bureaucracy and Democracy: Accountability and Performance with Steven Balla (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2nd ed., 2008, 1st ed. 2004): Analysis of bureaucracy centered "around four prominent social theories: bounded rationality, principal-agent theory, interest group mobilization, and network theory."
• Politics and Public Policy with Carl Van Horn and Donald Baumer (Washington, D.C.:Congressional Quarterly Press, 2001, 3rd edition).
• Organizational Report Cards with David Weimer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999)).
• Everybody's Children: Child Care as a Public Problem (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1995).
• Privatization and its Alternatives edited (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991): Presents 14 different perspectives on privatization. Gormley provides a "unifying framework" in his introduction.
• Taming the Bureaucracy: Muscles, Prayers, and Other Strategies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).
• The Midwest Response to the New Federalism edited with Peter Eisinger (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988).
• The Politics of Public Utility Regulation (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983).
• The Effects of Newspaper-Television Cross-Ownership on News Homogeneity (Chapel Hill: Institute for Research in Social Science, 1976).