Kelly was born at Humboldt, Saskatchewan and raised mainly in Saskatoon, but spent most of his summers on his father's small grain farm near St. Brieux, Sask. Since November 1996 he has been a plant pathologist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), in Lacombe, Alberta. He received a Bachelor’s of Science in Agriculture in Agricultural Biology from the College of Agriculture University of Saskatchewan in 1985, and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Plant Pathology from the Department of Biology at the University of Saskatchewan in 1988 and 1991, respectively. Kelly’s graduate work focused on the epidemiology of sclerotinia stem rot of canola and the potential of using petal testing as an indicator of disease risk and fungicide need.

Kelly’s focus at Lacombe is on diseases of barley, wheat and canola as part of collaborative studies with colleagues across Canada. He is currently involved with research related to the development and use of plant resistance for disease control in cereals, improving in-field management tools for fusarium head blight and leaf spots in wheat and barley and stem rot of canola, and plant disease surveillance and risk assessment.