Timothy Mellon is chairman and majority owner of Pan Am Systems, a Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based transportation holding company.
The son of Paul Mellon and his first wife, Mary Conover Brown, Timothy Mellon holds a degree in city planning from Yale University. He was the chief financier in the 1977 formation of Guilford Transportation Industries (GTI), a holding company named for his native Guilford, Connecticut.
In 1981, GTI purchased the Maine Central Railroad from U.S. Filter Corporation, adding the Boston & Maine and Delaware & Hudson railroads in 1983 and 1984, respectively, and in 1998 purchased the brand of bankrupt Pan American World Airways. The Pan Am name was subsequently succeeded by "Pan Am Clipper Connection," operated by subsidiary Boston-Maine Airways, which ceased operations in 2008 due to lack of financial fitness.
Mellon stepped down as trustee of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2002 after 21 years on its board.
Mellon is reportedly a resident of Saratoga, Wyoming. In 2010 he donated $1.5 million to Arizona's defense fund to help cover the costs of legal challenges against Arizona SB 1070, the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, the broadest and strictest anti-illegal immigration measure in the United States at the time of its passage. It has received national and international attention and has spurred considerable controversy.