Boley was a junior minister in the administration of President William Tolbert, but was briefly jailed for his associations with opposition groups. He was released on the morning of the 1980 military coup that brought Samuel Doe to power. Boley later became Minister of Presidential Affairs and Minister of Education under President Doe. After Doe's murder in September 1990, he went into exile in the United States, but was deported by the US government in 2012 after being accused of committing atrocities during the civil war including commanding armed child soldiers. He returned to Liberia and took over the leadership of the Liberia Peace Council (LPC), a rebel group that participated in the Liberian Civil War.