Alexander Joseph Bondurant was born March 19, 1836, in Buckingham County, Virginia. He was the son of Thomas Moseley Bondurant, a prominent planter in that County. Alexander was educated at Hampden-Sidney College and is believed to have done further study at the University of Virginia, Oxford, and Heidelberg. Bondurant came to Auburn in 1892 to accept the Chairmanship of the Agricultural Department at A.P.I. and to serve as Director of the State and Federal Agricultural Experiment Station. He left A.P.I. in 1896 to direct a tobacco culture project for the government of Australia. In 1901, he returned to his family farm at Greyburn, Virginia where he died on February 7, 1910. Bondurant, who served as a captain in the Department of Supplies of the Confederate Army, is buried at New Providence Church in Rockbridge County, Virginia, in his wife's family plot.

Bondurant's younger daughter, Dabney, married Cliff Hare, for whom Auburn's football stadium was named.