The conventional PID controller has been widely employed in industry. However, the PID controller with one degree of freedom(DOF) can not optimize both set-point tracking response and disturbance rejection response at the same time. In order to solve this problem, a few types of 2DOF PID controllers have been suggested. In this paper, a tuning formula for a 2DOF PID controller is presented. The optimal parameter sets of the 2DOF PID controller are determined based on the first-order plus time delay process and a real-coded genetic algorithm(RCGA) such that the ITAE performance criterion is minimized. The tuning rule is then addressed using calculated parameter sets and another RCGA. A set of simulation works are carried out on three processes with time delay to verify the effectiveness of the proposed rule.