Patrick Conley
American lawyer, real estate investor, and former history professor
Patrick T. Conley (born 1938) is an American lawyer, real estate investor, and former history professor. Conley served as Rhode Island's first historian laureate, a volunteer position appointed by the secretary of state, from 2012 to 2025. Conley was president of the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame and later stood by the organization's decision in 2023 to induct former national security advisor Michael Flynn. He is known for his involvement in the tax sale market in Providence, Rhode Island; he stated in 2022 that he had obtained 140 properties through tax sales in the previous 14 years.
Academic career, real estate activities, and political involvement
Conley was a professor at Providence College. He served as chief of staff for Republican mayoral candidate Buddy Cianci. In the 1980s, Conley successfully sued the Providence Journal for libel.
The New York Times in 2007 reported on Conley's efforts to convert Providence's industrial waterfront into a "$300 million mixed-use development" with "a hotel, marina, 240 condominiums or rental apartments, a parking garage for 890 cars, a floating restaurant, retail and office space, and green space for festivals, concerts and other outdoor events", which were opposed by some business owners. Conley is involved in tax sales in Providence. In 2022, he was among the advocates of a law that would have reduced out-of-state participation in the state's municipal tax sales.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q139963045. VIAF identifies the subject as 77624932. The Library of Congress control number is n80155939. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938, 2012, 2025 and 2023.
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This entry incorporates text from “Patrick Conley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.