Before he was the most powerful politician in New Jersey, Frank ("Hap") Farley was a two year letterman on the Georgetown basketball team while enrolled in law school.

Born and raised in Atlantic City, NJ, Farley arrived at Georgetown via Wenonah Military Academy and the University of Pennsylvania in 1922. "Hap" is not only an athlete of the highest calibre, but an excellent student, proficient in the science of legal reasoning and rich in his knowledge of the principles of law," wrote the Ye Domesday Booke in 1925. The legal field of New Jersey, in the person of "Hap", she will have a most worthy representative of old Georgetown."

But it was politics, not law, that distinguished Hap Farley. Elected to the New Jersey state house in 1937, and its senate in 1940, Farley took control of the Atlantic City political machine after the indictment of Enoch (Nucky) Johnson in 1940, the protagonist for the HBO series Boardwalk Empire. Farley served a record 32 years in the New Jersey senate, taking advantage of his leadership of the state Republican coalition (which controlled the senate for 30 of his 32 years) and the use of single county districting, where the senator from Atlantic County wielded the same voting power as that of Essex County, with a population nearly eight times its size.

Two state Supreme Court decisions in the 1960's ended single member districting, but Farley continued to control large segments of the New Jersey state budget, and directed numerous projects to support the struggling Atlantic City area, among them the Garden State Parkway, the Atlantic City Expressway, Atlantic City Race Track, and the creation of Stockton State College.

Farley opposed numerous attempts to bring legalized gambling in Atlantic City, mindful of the city's criminal reputation under Nucky Johnson. Farley's opposition to casino gambling eventually led to his defeat in 1972, and a gambling referendum passed four years later.

Frank Farley died in 1977, where the New York Times noted him as "an artful negotiator whose back room wheeling and dealing were legendary". He is the only Georgetown alumnus to have received the quintessential New Jersey honor: a highway rest stop. The Frank S. Farley Service Plaza is located along the Atlantic City Expressway in Hamilton Township, NJ.