Pennington Borough's lone representative on the regional board of education, Daniel J. O'Connor was appointed in May 2008 to fill the unexpired term of Kevin Doran. Like Doran, his interests in district operations center around finances. He chairs the Board's Educational Program Committee and is a member of its Negotiations and School Safety committees. He is the Board liaison to Toll Gate Grammar School and Pennington Borough Council and, along with Board President Lisa Wolff, serves as liaison to the Recreation Foundation of Hopewell Valley.

Raised in Westfield, where he attended public schools, O'Connor has lived in Hopewell Valley since 1997. In 2002 he and his family moved from Hopewell Township to Pennington where he has been an active volunteer, serving as a religious education teacher in the parish of St. James Church and as a coach in the Pop Warner Football Association. He has also helped teach English to non-native speakers through the Literacy Volunteers of America.

In 2004, O'Connor and his wife, Kathleen, founded Mileston Research Inc., a biotechnology company devoted to finding a cure for food allergies.

An attorney, O'Connor is a vice president and general counsel for Bracco Diagnostics Inc., of Princeton, a contrast imaging and medical device company and U.S. division of the Bracco Group, an international firm specializing in the research and development of diagnostic imaging products used in such medical applications as X-rays, MRIs and ultrasounds.

Over the last decade, O'Connor was the senior vice president and general counsel of ImClone Systems Inc. and the general counsel of PharmaNet Development Group LLC. He has designed and taught a course on outsource contracting for biopharmaceutical professionals at the annual meeting of the Drug Information Association.

In the late 1990s, O'Connor worked as an assistant prosecutor in the Somerset County Prosecutor's Office, where he prosecuted adult and juvenile criminal cases, and was a certified instructor at the Somerset County Police Academy. He represented the Prosecutor's Office on cable television and other public forums on the topic of Internet safety.

A former captain in the U.S. Marine Corps, O'Connor was part of the first wave of Marines deployed to Saudi Arabia in 1990 as part of Operation Desert Shield.

O'Connor and his wife have three sons, John, a student at Timberlane Middle School, and Jim and Bill, students at Toll Gate Grammar School. Kathleen O'Connor serves as president of the Board of Trustees of the Pennington Public Library.

O'Connor holds a bachelor's degree in English from Boston University and a doctorate from Dickinson School of Law. He is a member of the bar in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.