[1] He was related to Daniel Murray, Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland.
[3] James junior was educated at the Propaganda College at Rome, where he remained from his fourteenth to his twenty-fourth year (1852), when he was admitted to the priesthood.
After taking possession of the see, the ecclesiastical and educational development of the diocese under his auspices were enormous.
Murray visited Europe in 1871; and on a second trip in 1881 secured for his diocese a community of Redemptorist missionaries.
Murray's health began to worsen by the mid-1890s and in 1897 he chose Patrick Vincent Dwyer, his protégé, as coadjutor bishop.