Sherman P. Lloyd was born in St. Anthony, Fremont County, Idaho, on 11 January 1914. He attended St. Anthony and Rexburg public schools. He graduated from Utah State University in 1935 and from George Washington University Law School in 1939.

While in law school and after graduation, Lloyd worked for the United States Department of Agriculture. After working in the food stamp program in Denver and San Francisco, he moved to Salt Lake City to open a law practice in 1940. That same year, he began his twenty-two-year-long association with the Utah Retail Grocers Association, acting as secretary and counsel. He was considered a champion of the small businessperson.

In 1954 Sherman Lloyd was elected to the Utah State Senate. During his four terms in the state senate he held the offices of minority leader and senate president. During that time he was also chairman of the Utah Legislative Council. He authored legislation establishing the local-option sales tax and the Utah council on criminal justice, and he co-authored legislation setting up the Utah Council on Higher Education.

He was elected as a Republican to the United States House of Representatives, where he served from 1962 through 1964. He was named to the House Banking and Currency Committee. After an unsuccessful attempt at the United States Senate in 1964, Lloyd returned to the private sector as vice-president of Prudential Federal Savings in charge of public relations. He was also a visiting lecturer in the University of Utah Political Science Department.

He recaptured the congressional seat in 1966, and was reelected in 1968 and 1970. During his eight years in Congress he held many committee assignments. He supported legislation aimed at the development of state and national resources through private enterprise. As chairman of a Republican task force on energy in 1970, he spearheaded a resolution to establish a prototype oil shale plant in Utah. The resolution received heavy opposition from environmentalists and was never signed into law.

After losing a bid for a fifth term, Sherman Lloyd was appointed as assistant director of the United States Information Agency in 1973. He resigned that post to accept the Milton R. Merrill Chair in Political Science at Utah State University for the 1973-1974 academic year. In 1974 Lloyd was named trade specialist in charge of the Utah office of the Department of Commerce. After an unsuccessful attempt to gain nomination to the United States Senate in 1976, he began publishing the Bear Lake Magazine, the official organ of the Friends for Bear Lake, which covers the history, recreational, and economic development, and future prospects of this northern Utah lake.

Sherman Lloyd married Edith Ann Gunn in 1935, and they were the parents of one son and three daughters. Lloyd died in Salt Lake City on 15 December 1979 and is buried in the Salt Lake Cemetery.