Jerome T. Walsh held advanced degrees in theology from the University of Louvain, in Sacred Scripture from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, and a PhD in Near Eastern languages and literature from the University of Michigan. He has contributed to such reference works as The New Jerome Biblical Commentary and The Anchor Bible Dictionary, and he frequently published articles and reviews in professional journals of biblical studies. He was a member of the Catholic Biblical Association of America, where he was collaborating on the second edition of the New American Bible translation of the Old Testament. He was a priest of the Archdiocese of Detroit.