Development of versatile nanoscale platforms for cancer diagnosis and therapy is of great importance for applications in translational medicine. In this work, we present the use of gamma-polyglutamic acid (gamma-PGA) nanogels (NGs) to load polypyrrole (PP gamma) for thermal/photoacoustic (PA) imaging and radiotherapy (RT)-sensitized tumor photothermal therapy (PTT). First, a double emulsion approach was used to prepare the cystamine dihydrochloride (Cys)-cross-linked gamma-PGA NGs. Next, the cross-linked NGs served as a reactor to be filled with pyrrole monomers that were subjected to in situ oxidation polymerization in the existence of Fe(III) ions. The formed uniform PP gamma-loaded NGs having an average diameter of 38.9 +/- 8.6 nm exhibited good water-dispersibility and colloid stability. The prominent near-infrared (NIR) absorbance feature due to the loaded PP gamma endowed the NGs with contrast enhancement in PA imaging. The hybrid NGs possessed excellent photothermal conversion efficiency (64.7%) and stability against laser irradiation, and could be adopted for PA imaging and PTT of cancerous cells and tumor xenografts. Importantly, we also explored the cooperative PTT and X-ray radiation-mediated RT for enhanced tumor therapy. We show that PTT of tumors can be more significantly sensitized by RT using the sequence of laser irradiation followed by X-ray radiation as compared to using the reverse sequence. Our study suggests a promising theranostic platform of hybrid NGs that may be potentially utilized for PA imaging and combination therapy of different types of tumors.