He was born in Collie, Western Australia, the son of Rowley James, a future Labor member for Hunter in the Australian House of Representatives.

He was a policeman from 1940 to 1960, when he contested the by-election for his father's old seat of Hunter that followed H. V. Evatt's resignation.

[1] In 2014 newly released Russian intelligence archives revealed that James had been in regular contact with the Soviet embassy in Canberra in the early 1970s, although it was unclear what information he had passed on.

[2] ASIO files have confirmed the KGB connection.

This article about an Australian Labor Party member of the House of Representatives is a stub.