In 1927–28, the first year future UT President Andy Holt taught high school, Tom Dunlap was a member of his class in trigonometry at Humboldt High School. He earned the baccalaureate degree from UT in 1933 and a law degree in 1935. He was the recipient of a $25 Faculty Freshman Scholarship award and went on to be given the junior toga and named a Torchbearer as a senior. He was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity and the Scarabbean Society.
Following graduation from law school, he practiced law in Knoxville for six years and then served five years in naval intelligence in World War II. He then practiced law in Memphis and was for a time assistant US attorney in Memphis. In 1947 Dunlap gave up the practice of law to manage his family’s three-thousand-acre farm in Humboldt, Tennessee. He also helped to operate his wife’s (Mary Elizabeth Raines) family farm, which was also in Humboldt. He was associated with the Merchants State Bank in Humboldt that was eventually purchased by Union Planters Bank of Memphis. Upon his death in 2001, he made a bequest of $7 million to fund scholarships for upperclassmen.