James City is an unincorporated area and census-designated place (CDP) in Craven County, North Carolina, United States.

James City was developed during the American Civil War when Union forces, occupying nearby New Bern, constructed a resettlement camp for freed slaves on land belonging to Confederate Army Colonel Peter G. Evans.

Originally referred to as the Trent River Settlement, by 1865 it had been renamed James City, after its founder, Union Army chaplain Horace James, superintendent of Negro affairs and agent for the Bureau of Freedmen, Refugees, and Abandoned Lands.

[5] James City is located in central Craven County along the west bank of the tidal Neuse River.

It is bordered to the north by the city of New Bern, the county seat, across the Trent River, a tributary of the Neuse.