James Addison Baker (January 10, 1857 – August 2, 1941) was an American attorney and banker in Houston, Texas.

As a young attorney, Baker specialized in railroad law as Houston was growing into a regional transportation hub.

[3] He had four younger sisters and a brother who survived to adulthood: Minnie, Anna B, Nettie, Ruth, and Robert Lee.

[5] The school relocated from Austin to Bastrop, Texas after 1870, where it established a barracks with a capacity for housing 400 students.

He studied classical languages and German while finishing as the top student of mathematics in his freshman class.

[7] In 1874, Baker joined the Houston Light Guard, a local militia organized the previous year.

The Houston Light Guard was a vehicle for local social networking, as many lawyers and business leaders joined the militia or lent it material support.

He received a promotion to captain in August 1879, after which he led the honor guard presented to President Grant for his visit to Houston in 1880.

In Houston alone, Rice owned large stakes in a bank, a brewer, a brick works, a gas light utility, and a seed oil refiner.

Their primary residences were New York City and Dunellen, New Jersey, but they also maintained an apartment at the Capital Hotel in Houston, where they spent many winters.

In April 1896, Libbie was in poor health and she sought warmer climate as a remedy, bringing the couple to Houston.

She developed a friendship with a local lawyer and his wife, Orren T. and Marian Seward Holt, while also entertaining a niece from Cleveland, Mamie Baldwin Huntington.

During her illness in Houston, Holt wrote a new will for her, naming himself as sole executor and designating ten percent of the proceeds as his commission, which was witnessed only by two of his in-laws.

Two weeks later Baker drew a new will for Rice, which bequeathed the bulk of his estate to the foundation for the Institute for the Advancement of Literature, Science, and Art.

He next moved with a counter-suit in federal court, claiming that Holt had no standing to file for the estate since the Rices never established Texas as their residence.

Over the next two years, Baker interviewed witnesses to the Rice marriage in Houston and New York in preparation for the impending case.

[14] Rice's valet, Charles Jones, sent a telegram to Baker with news of his boss's death on the afternoon of September 24.

Baker and Frederick Rice telegraphed contacts in Houston and New York, while requesting that Norman S. Meldrum secure all papers at the deceased man's apartment.

[15] Baker, acting as Rice's personal attorney and as a defender of the interests of his large estate, helped to solve the murder plot.

[18] The murder case and litigation over the will, which left a trust fund for the Rice Institute, took seven years to resolve.

[19] Baker, as an executor of the previous 1896 will, successfully argued for admitting it into evidence at the trial, a major point in the case.

[20]: 10  Because of Baker's business acumen, by the time the case ended, the endowment for Rice Institute had doubled to $10 million.

[18] Baker was the main representative of the estate and was the founding chairman of the university's board of trustees, where he served from the chartering of Rice in 1891 until his death in 1941.

[20]: 10 Overlapping with the legal work for the Rice estate was Houston's growth in response to the oil strike at Spindletop.

[2] The rise of Baker's legal and business career started after the Rice murder case in 1900 coincided with Houston's increasing importance as a regional transportation and commercial center, replacing Galveston after the devastating 1900 hurricane.

In addition, an oil strike at Spindletop in 1901 elevated the Texas Gulf Coast region in terms of national commercial importance.

All of the solvent banks were assessed a recovery fee, based on a percentage of their assets and healthy businesses also contributed to the fund.

He remained involved with the Houston Settlement Association after Alice's death, and he was active with both organizations during their inter-agency collaborations.

This family gathering included his sisters Anna B. Thompson and Nettie Duncan, in addition to his brothers-in-law, and his nephews and nieces.