Billionaire Timothy Mellon may keep a low profile, but he donates substantial amounts to players in Washington. Now, he has just been identified by The New York Times as the anonymous donor of the $130 million to help pay troops during the federal government shutdown.
As the U.S. government shutdown approaches its 29th day, President Donald Trump turned to the banking heir to help ensure the hundreds of thousands of service members, including members of the military, are paid.
Mellon is also the 83-year-old grandson of former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon and the great-grandson of Thomas Mellon, founder of Mellon Bank.
He emerged on the political scene as a megadonor in 1996, and over the course of two decades dished out $350,000 in political donations to George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney.
Since 2020, he has reportedly poured $227 million into federal candidates and political committees, nearly all Republicans. And last year, Mellon made a $50 million donation to MAGA Inc., the super PAC supporting Trump’s bid. It was one of the largest individual contributions ever made public.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, Trump’s administration’s 2025 budget requested about $600 billion in total military compensation. A $130 million donation would equal about $100 per service member—though it’s still unknown how the money will be distributed among them. Plus, critics note that the sum would have covered the salaries of America’s 1.3 million active service members for less than a day.
Where Tim Mellon has donated his wealth
Though Mellon keeps a low profile, his donations are large and often reflect conservative ideology. Mellon, who once supported liberal social initiatives, later shifted toward conservative views, expressing criticism of large federal welfare programs.
“I’m not going to use his name unless he lets me do it,” Trump said in a press conference when announcing the donation. “He doesn’t really want the recognition,” he continued.
In the 1970s, his charitable giving supported feminist and ecological causes and Native Americans. Mellon has donated roughly $115 million to the pro-Trump super PAC “Make America Great Again Inc.” since 2023—including multiple million-dollar contributions that helped fuel Trump’s 2024 campaign effort.
In 2024, he also donated stock to support the construction of a wall along the U.S.–Mexico border to the tune of $54 million.
Mellon also donated at least $25 million to groups supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the current Secretary of Health and Human Services, who previously ran as an independent.
Forbes reported that Mellon has donated likely more than half of his fortune to politics. He has now given at least $504 million to politics. Separately, they reported no other billionaire gave more than $20 million or more than 1% of their wealth to Trump, Biden or Harris during the last presidential campaign.
Fortune has reached out to Timothy Mellon for comment.
Where did Timothy Mellon get his wealth?
Aside from inheriting wealth from his family’s banking dynasty—his grandfather, Andrew Mellon, reportedly left Tim and his other two grandchildren with a gift of $23 million, roughly $500 million today—he has also expanded his own ventures.
In the 1980s, Mellon spent an estimated $22 million of his money to acquire a series of struggling railroads. He owned Pan Am Systems, a New England-based freight railroad and aviation holding company, which included Pan Am Railways.
The railroad, which was a small regional line that often ran into worker-safety and environmental issues, was sold to CSX Transportation in 2022 for roughly $600 million.
Mellon says he isn’t a billionaire, but Forbes estimates his net worth was around $1 billion, based on his family wealth and the sale of his railroad company—however, with sizable anonymous donations after another, the true scale of his wealth remains unknown.
