Born in Ireland, he immigrated with his widowed mother to the United States as a child, to settle in Georgetown, in the District of Columbia.

As provincial, he laid the groundwork for the transfer of ownership of the newly established College of the Holy Cross from the Diocese of Boston to the Society of Jesus.

James Ryder was born on October 8, 1800, in Dublin, Kingdom of Ireland, to a Protestant father, who died when his son was a child, and a Catholic mother.

[4] They left from Alexandria, Virginia, on June 6, 1820,[6] and landed in Gibraltar to be quarantined, before traveling to Naples on July 13 and then on to Rome in late August,[7] where Ryder studied theology and philosophy.

[10] He became a good friend of Archbishop Giovanni Mastai-Ferretti (later Pope Pius IX),[8] who appointed him the chair of philosophy.

[11] Ryder returned to the United States in 1829, where he took up a professorship in philosophy and theology at Georgetown, to teach Jesuit scholastics.

The group gathered resolved that "slavery in the abstract" was evil, but that Catholic citizens were obligated to support the civil institutions of the United States.

He had a particularly good relationship with the President of the United States, John Tyler, who enrolled his son at Georgetown,[24] and whose sister converted to Catholicism.

[25] Their relationship went so far that Ryder played a significant role in the unsuccessful attempt to have Tyler run as a Democrat in the 1844 presidential election.

[28] Word of his preaching reached President James Buchanan, who would attend his sermons and who received private instruction in Catholicism from him.

[36] His first act was to build a new edifice for Holy Trinity Catholic Church in the Georgetown neighborhood, which was then located on college property.

[25] He also implemented his fervent support for temperance by prohibiting students from consuming alcohol on or off campus, and eventually applied this ban to the Jesuits as well.

Upset at this decision, several members refused to perform their nightly reading at the refectory, and later threw stones in the dormitory.

Forty-four of the students abandoned the college for downtown Washington and wrote Ryder that they would not return until the three were re-admitted and the prefect replaced.

[45] In September 1843, while president of Georgetown, Ryder was appointed the provincial superior of the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus, with the strong support of his predecessor, Francis Dzierozynski.

[46][47] Ryder voiced support that the Jesuits should sell their parochial property, leaving this to diocesan priests, to instead focus on education in cities.

[24] At the same time, the Bishop of Boston, Benedict Joseph Fenwick, had become concerned with the cost of operating the newly established College of the Holy Cross.

[33] He held the post until 1845; Jan Roothaan believed the province had to be put under the control of a European to rectify the compounding scandal and mismanagement that had begun under Thomas Mulledy.

[47] After his first presidency at Georgetown ended in 1845, Ryder went to Rome to clear his name in light of suspicions of his relationship with a woman who had exchanged letters with him.

[52] As president, he oversaw the construction of an east wing at the college, in accordance with the original plan for the school, which contained a dining room, chapel, study hall, and dormitory.

[55] The lack of discipline among the Jesuits at Holy Cross drew the commentary of both the Bishop of Boston, John Bernard Fitzpatrick, and Roothaan, who were particularly concerned with the propensity for drinking among the priests.

He also wore layman's clothes, such as a bow tie rather than a Roman collar, in accordance with the orders of Charles Stonestreet, the Maryland provincial, that the Jesuits should not wear their clerical attire.

He was forced to resign the presidency due to his deteriorating health, though his likeness endures in the form of a gargoyle of Barbelin Hall.

[24] While there, he fell ill, and briefly went to Havana, Cuba, and then to the Southern United States, where he recuperated for several months.