The iPad took a dump and no longer works and it wasn’t backed up to iCloud is there a way to get my old photos off it still?

If your iPad will not power-on and you have neglected to maintain either an iCloud or iTunes backup, you’ll not be able to retrieve any data from your dead iPad.

If it’s dead, any local stored data is lost.

Sorry - this clearly isn’t the news you were hoping to learn.

If you didn’t update the iPad to iCloud, then there is no way that you’re going to get those pictures. Once the device is dead, there is no way to get anything off the memory of the device. If you did do some backup to iCloud then you’ll be able to get the pictures that were last updated to iCloud at the time of that backup. If there isn’t any pictures on iCloud then I’m afraid those pictures are gone.

This is why it is very important to backup your device as much as possible, it’s not a matter of if it’s going to happen, but more when.