James Brent Walker[3] (born September 13, 1950) is the former Executive Director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, a leading church-state advocacy group.
After retirement from the BJC, he served as Interim President of the John Leland Center for Theological Studies in Arlington, Virginia, until the end of 2018.
Walker left the firm in 1986 to enter Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville where he earned a Master of Divinity degree and was named the most outstanding graduate.
In 1999—upon the retirement of James Dunn—Walker was named executive director of the organization, whose mission is "to defend and extend God-given religious liberty for all, furthering the Baptist heritage that champions the principle that religion must be freely exercised, neither advanced nor inhibited by government.
He has been quoted by numerous national publications and has appeared on CNN's Talk Back Live, NBC's "Today" show, MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews," Fox Morning News, Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor," and National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered."