Brady, Hugh (c.1600–1669), priest and jurist, was born at Castletara, Co. Cavan. Nothing is known of his parentage, or early life. He entered the University of Louvain on 18 December 1620 and read humanities in the College of the Most Holy Trinity. Two years later he passed into the Irish college. In 1637 he was ordained to the diaconate. Two years later he was appointed by the university extraordinarius professor legum. At this time he also became a minor canon of the church of St Pierre; he later became a professor ordinarius and a major canon. On 16 April 1643 he was appointed president of the College of St Anne, a position which he held for twenty-six years. He served as rector of the university in 1660 and 1663, and in April 1663 he succeeded Jacobus Santvoert as professor primarius juris pontificii. He died 14 October 1669 and was buried in the church of St Pierre, Louvain.
In an account of the Irish colleges in Louvain, Antwerp, Tournai, Lille, and Douai a Belgian Premonstratensian, writing under the pen name ‘A. O'Flanders’ described Brady as ‘one of the most brilliant professors of law in the University’. Brady himself erected a memorial window in the church of the Irish Dominicans in Louvain; as well as giving his academic qualifications and religious titles it mentions four townlands in the Ballyhaise district of Co Cavan (Corgarve, Drumhome, Ballyhaise, and Drumliff) which comprised his ancestral lands. A portrait of Brady is reproduced in O'Connell (frontispiece).