James Allen Zimble (October 12, 1933 – December 14, 2011) was a commissioned officer in the Medical Corps of the United States Navy.

After retiring from the Navy in 1991, Zimble was appointed President of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland.

[1] Zimble enrolled in Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1951, from where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1955 and was a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity.

[1] In 1986, RADM Zimble was again promoted, this time as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategic Planning and Medical Program Management (subsequently redesignated as the Force Health Protection & Readiness (FHP&R)) in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs.

In this role, Zimble was the executive secretary of the Defense Department's Advisory Committee on graduate medical education.

[1] In 1987, Zimble was promoted to vice admiral (VADM) and held the office of Surgeon General of the United States Navy.

During this period, Zimble also presided over the disestablishment of the Naval Medical Command and the re-establishment of the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED).

[1] Later that year, Zimble was appointed by Dick Cheney, the United States Secretary of Defense, as President of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) in Bethesda, Maryland.

Since that time, the USUHS GSN has grown from its charter class of two students in one advanced practice nursing discipline in 1993 to more than 530 graduates in five program areas.

[4] Zimble died on December 14, 2011, of coronary artery disease[3] at Lawrence and Memorial Hospital in New London, Connecticut.