After completing his PhD, Dally stayed in Chicago as the assistant director research Armour Research Foundation from 1961 to 1964 with
Max M. Frocht and then professor at Illinois Institute of Technology from 1964 to 1971. He moved to the
University of Maryland, College Park as a professor and department chair from 1971 to 1979. After a move to the University Rhode Island as the Dean of the College Engineering from 1979 to 1982 and IBM from 1982 to 1984, he returned to University Maryland, College Park, as a professor mechanical engineering until his retirement in 1997 and continues on as emeritus. Throughout his career he made seminal contributions in the field of mechanics studying stress wave propagation and dynamic fracture mechanics. He contributed to seminal books in the fields of mechanics, including
Experimental Stress Analysis with
William F. Riley. Dally was named an Honorary Member of the
Society for Experimental Mechanics in 1983. He was named a member of the
National Academy of Engineering in 1984. In 2016, the
Society for Experimental Mechanics introduced the J.W. Dally Young Investigator award in his honor. == Awards and recognition ==