Gregg Murray was born in California in 1964 to a U.S. Navy pilot and a high school business teacher. He grew up in Dallas, Texas, later earning a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1986 (B.A., Government) and a master's degree from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1990 (M.A., Political Science). After running political campaigns and working in state and local government in Honolulu, Hawaii, for several years, he returned to school to earn a doctorate from the University of Houston in 2003 (Ph.D., Political Science). Following faculty appointments at the University of Texas at Brownsville, the State University of New York at Brockport, and Texas Tech University, Murray was appointed as Associate Professor and Chair of Political Science at Augusta University in 2016 then Professor of Political Science in the new Department of Social Sciences in 2018.  

In addition to his academic duties, Murray has served as the Editor-in-Chief of Politics and the Life Sciences, a peer-reviewed journal published by Cambridge University Press, since 2020.