A native of Shreveport, Louisiana, Thomas Currier received his LL.B. from Tulane University in 1956, after attending Princeton and Stanford Universities. He was then an assistant in research in Federal Practice at Yale Law School. In 1958, he entered private practice in New Orleans for two years, before joining the law faculty at Tulane, where he taught Civil Procedures and Oil and Gas Law. He also taught Labor Law and Constitutional Law at Louisiana State University. He joined the UVA law faculty to teach such courses as Labor Law, Legal Method, Civil Procedures, Constitutional Law, and Federal Courts.