Nolan, John Philip (1838–1912), landowner, army officer, and politician, was born 3 August 1838 in Dublin, the eldest of six sons of John Nolan (b. 1810) of Ballinderry, near Tuam, Co. Galway, a catholic barrister, landowner, and magistrate, who, after relieving the poor during the famine, died of famine fever in April 1847, and his wife, Mary Anne, daughter of Walter Nolan of Logboy, near Ballyhaunis, Co. Mayo, who, like her husband, was descended from Thomas Nolan (d. 1628) of Ballinderry castle and Iskerone. John Philip Nolan was educated at Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare, Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, TCD, and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He became an officer in the royal artillery (1857), and served throughout the Abyssinia campaign (1867–8); he was at the capture of Magdala and was mentioned in dispatches. In Abyssinia he acted also as correspondent of the Daily News, sending reports that were highly praised by military men. He was the inventor of a range-finder adopted by the Russian army and later by the British.
During his minority and absences from Ireland, the estate Nolan inherited from his father – he owned, in 1876, 6,866 acres in Co. Galway and 811 in Co. Mayo with a total annual value of £1,962 – was managed by an agent. When Nolan was considering standing for parliament at a by-election in Co. Galway in December 1870, he sought the support of a local catholic priest, Patrick Duggan (qv), whose family had long been friendly with his. Duggan refused his support, objecting that twelve of Nolan's tenants at Portacarron, near Oughterard, had been capriciously evicted. Nolan agreed to arbitration and reinstatement. When another by-election occurred in the county (February 1872) he stood as a home-ruler and advocate of tenant right, with enthusiastic support from the catholic clergy as well as from a local Fenian, Matthew Harris (qv), and was elected by 2,823 votes to 658. Four months later, however, he was unseated on petition by the unsuccessful candidate, another army captain, William Le Poer Trench (qv), on grounds of undue influence by certain clerics, among them the three local bishops, Duggan (appointed bishop of Clonfert in September 1871), John MacHale (qv), and John MacEvilly (qv). The legal proceedings cost Nolan £14,000, but he was soon reimbursed by his supporters, stood again at the next general election (February 1874), and was returned. Nolan represented Co. Galway until it was divided (1885) and then North Galway (1885–95, 1900–06).
After the general election of 1874 Isaac Butt (qv) organised his followers in the house of commons into a Home Rule Party and Nolan was appointed one of its two whips, which did not, however, inhibit him from joining Joseph Gillis Biggar (qv) in deliberately obstructing the business of the house by speaking at excessive length. For being an obstructionist he was ostracised by fellow army officers. He eventually retired from the army with the rank of lieutenant colonel (1881). By 1878 his high regard for Butt was waning and he was increasingly drawn towards the rising Charles Stewart Parnell (qv), whom, as whip, he had formally introduced to the house of commons on 22 April 1875. Nolan was not, however, a member of the Land League and seems never to have enthused over agrarian reform. He loyally supported Parnell when the latter imposed William Henry O'Shea (qv), whose wife was Parnell's mistress (as Nolan very probably knew), on a reluctant party at the Galway election of 1885. After O'Shea obtained a divorce on grounds of adultery, it was Nolan who seconded the unsuccessful proposal of Thomas Sexton (qv) at the next meeting of the parliamentary party that Parnell continue as chairman (25 November 1890) and who proposed an amendment to the anti-Parnell motion of John Barry (qv) in the commons committee room 15 (1 December).
A bachelor, Nolan was a member of the Army and Navy Club and made full use of the club facilities of the house of commons. In the 1895 election he lost his North Galway seat to the anti-Parnellite Denis Kilbride (qv), and again failed to be elected in a by-election for Louth South the following year. He found his enforced absence from the house socially as well as politically disappointing. He was returned unopposed for North Galway in the 1900 election, but lost his seat in 1906 when he ran as an independent nationalist. He died 29 January 1912 in Dublin and was buried at Tuam.