Downers Grove native Dan Tully credits a trip to the American Legion’s Boys State summer program with spearheading his interest in a career serving his country.

A high school senior at the time, Tully was selected to participate in the program that is structured as a hands-on experience on how government works.

Tully said he learned about the importance of “agency,” adding “if you see a problem, you do something about it.”

He also said they learned about civic participation.

“When I went, the program was still run by World War II veterans,” Tully said.

“It was a really meaningful experience,” said Tully, who had two grandfathers who he never met who served in World War II.

The World War II veterans running the camp asked if he would consider serving in the military and “that single experience at camp planted the seed in me,” Tully said.

Graduating from Benet Academy, Tully went on to Northwestern University before earning his law degree from Stanford University.

Now the U.S. Army Reserve Judge Advocate Major is making a run for the U.S. House of Representatives in Illinois’s 8th Congressional District – a seat that became open after U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi announced his bid for retiring U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s seat.

Tully, a Carol Stream resident, joined the military in December 2017 as a member of the Army Reserve Special Operations Command. He advised on matters involving national security as well as fiscal, administrative and international law.

For nearly half of that time, Tully was on active duty serving in five different mobilizations including a one-year deployment in Kuwait and Iraq.

“I was a national security law attorney,” he said. “I advised commanders on the law about conflict and rules of engagement as they applied to lethal and nonlethal and other types of operations throughout the Middle East.”

Tully also worked on the U.S. and China relationship as a judge advocate as part of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

For his candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives, Tully begins most of his days at a local train station talking to voters, gathering petitions and “knocking on doors.”

In a crowded race, Tully said he is up for the challenge, crediting his law experience, especially when “the institutions we rely on are under attack.” He believes his military experience sets him apart from the pack.

Up until March, Tully worked as a federal employee with the U.S. Department of Commerce working on emerging markets in Asia and the Pacific.

With some of his work funded through the United States Agency for International Development, Tully said after the presidential inauguration he got a call to stop everything and return to Washington.

“In the subsequent months, I watched as USAID was dismantled,” he said.

Tully entered the Congressional race on June 11 “in a moment of crisis for the country and when the rule of law, the foundation of everything we care about and that sets us apart from every other country on earth and this notion that everyone is equal before the law is at stake.”

“I feel I am the best prepared to meet the moment,” he said.