U.S. Congressman. He was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, elected to the Fiftieth and Fifty-first Congresses, serving from 1877 to 1891. He was an unsuccessful candidate for re-nomination. Born the son of Robert Finley and Ann Gatliff, he attended local schools before studying law and being admitted to the bar in 1859. He had a law practice in Williamsburg, Kentucky. During the American Civil War, he entered politics being a member of the Kentucky State House of Representatives from 1861 to 1862, resigning before the term was completed. He became a Commonwealth Attorney from 1862 to his resignation in 1866, but re-elected in 1867, serving until 1870 for a total of six years. He was an unsuccessful candidate for election in 1870 to the Forty-second United States Congress. He served in the Kentucky State Senate from 1875 to 1876 but resigned upon the appointment by United States President Grant as United States District Attorney of Kentucky, serving from 1876 to 1877. He was judge of the Kentucky fifteenth judicial circuit, serving from 1880 to 1886 before being elected to the United States Congress. After leaving Congress, he resumed the practice of law and engaged in the coal mining business until his death. His large upright grave marker lists his political achievements. He married Jane Moss and the couple had two sons and three daughters. His youngest son, Charles, who was living in exile in Indiana from 1900 for any possible involvement with the assassination of Governor of Kentucky William Goebel, returned to Kentucky in 1909 after Republican Governor Wilson extended him clemency. In the same year, Finley died on October 16, 1909. The United States House of Representative Archive biography for Finley has him interred in Woodlawn Cemetery instead of Finley Cemetery.