Timothy Mellon

Timothy Mellon (born July 22, 1942) is an American businessman, the grandson of Andrew Mellon, and an heir to the Mellon banking fortune. He is a major donor to the Republican Party.

Mellon's net worth has been estimated at between $700 million and $4 billion. As of June 2024, Forbes estimated the Mellon family's net worth at $14.1 billion.

Early life and education Born on July 22, 1942, in Pittsburgh, Mellon is the son of Paul Mellon and his first wife, Mary Conover Brown, and the grandson of U.S. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon.

According to Mellon's memoir, he grew up in a Virginia mansion and a private plane shuttled him to boarding school in Massachusetts. He attended The Fenn School in Concord, Massachusetts, and Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts. He was in Trumbull College and the Scroll and Key secret society. Mellon enrolled in Yale Law School but dropped out after three days, instead earning a master's degree in city planning from Yale in 1966. Mellon later rebuked his Yale education as "pseudo-scientific sociological claptrap" and "Progressive dogma".

Career and life events After graduation, Mellon worked at the Yale computer center for three years.

In 1977, Mellon founded Perma Treat, a treated wood business that produced railroad ties for Amtrak and Conrail. a railroad holding company named for his adopted hometown of Guilford, Connecticut. That year, GTI purchased the Boston & Maine railroad in April and the Maine Central Railroad in May, with government approval for the Boston & Maine completed in 1983. GTI also purchased the Delaware & Hudson (D&H) with government approval in 1984; the D&H was sold in 1988.

In 1998, GTI purchased the bankrupt Pan American World Airways' brand rights for $28.5 million. GTI, renamed Pan Am Railways in 2006, he sold it in 2020.

In 2002, Mellon stepped down as a trustee of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation after 21 years on its board. Mellon claimed that the plane had been found in 2010, before he made his donation.

In 2014, U.S. District Judge Scott W. Skavdahl granted TIGHAR's motion for summary judgment after recognizing that even Mellon's own experts were unable to confirm his allegations about the 2010 photographs that he claimed showed the plane. Skavdahl concluded: Defendants represented to Plaintiff they were planning another expedition in their continued quest to find the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's airplane. Upon reading about Defendants' efforts, Plaintiff contacted Defendants and expressed his interest in supporting the expedition with a monetary contribution. That's exactly what the parties then did. No false representations were made. Regardless, no rational trier of fact could find Defendants falsely represented they had not found Earhart's plane by embarking on another expedition in hopes of finding conclusive evidence to prove it. No matter how convinced or sincere Plaintiff is in his subjective belief and opinion that Amelia Earhart's airplane was or should have been discovered prior to the making of his donation, that belief and opinion is insufficient to create a genuine dispute of material fact.

Mellon appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which affirmed the district court's ruling without holding oral argument. The Tenth Circuit concluded that the lack of actionable falsity precluded Mellon's claims.

Politics

Views and autobiography Mellon is a Republican, though in the past he supported and donated to liberal causes. He is anti-tax and anti-union. He was a listener of Rush Limbaugh.

As of 2024 reporting, he had donated to only two Democrats: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for her 2018 campaign, and Tulsi Gabbard, for her 2020 presidential campaign. the broadest and strictest anti-illegal immigration measure in the U.S. at the time of its passage.

In the 2018 United States elections, Mellon was a major political donor, especially to the Republican-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund. In April 2020, he donated $10 million to Donald Trump's super PAC America First Action.

In August 2021, Mellon donated $53.1 million in stock to the state of Texas for construction of the Mexico–United States barrier walls.

2024 presidential campaign In the second quarter of 2023, Mellon donated $5 million to American Values 2024, a super PAC affiliated with the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 2024 presidential campaign; that, together with a large donation from billionaire Gavin de Becker, accounted for 97% of donations the PAC received through the end of June 2023. By March 2024, Mellon's donations to the PAC totaled $20 million, and by July 2024 it had increased to $25 million. By July 2024, Mellon had given $75 million toward supporting Trump's campaign,

Mellon was the second-largest individual donor in the 2024 presidential election, spending $197 million.

Post-2024 In the first half of 2025, Mellon donated an additional $2 million to MAGA Inc.

During the 2025 United States federal government shutdown, Mellon donated $130 million to help pay members of the United States Armed Forces. The New York Times noted that the donation would equal approximately $100 per service member.

Personal life Mellon (left) receives a framed photograph of the USCGC Mellon, a ship named after his grandfather, Andrew.The New York Times has called Mellon a "reclusive billionaire". His nephew has called him the "most private Mellon there is" and "a highly private individual" to those who know him. The couple moved to Guilford, Connecticut. They divorced by the early 1980s. They moved from Guilford to Saratoga, Wyoming, in 2005.

Legal issues Mellon has been involved in a number of legal issues, often over relatively small dollar amounts. Testifying in a 2014 civil case, he estimated he had been deposed 15 to 20 times, and that he did not know how many lawsuits he was then involved in.

In 2004, he was sued by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal for cutting down trees in a conserved wetland and was fined.