Ley was born in Bath, England. His father died in 1882 and his mother moved the family to Australia in 1886. He attended Crown Street Public School in Sydney until he was ten. He then worked as an assistant in his mother's grocery store. He learnt shorthand, he became a junior clerk-stenographer in a solicitor's office at 14. He married Emily Louisa (known as "Lewie") Vernon in 1898, the year she came to Australia from England. Both husband and wife were active in politics. She was part of the international suffrage movement. He became a state (New South Wales) and federal politician from 1917 to 1928.