Born in Lurgan, County Armagh, he was the son of Forest Reid, master of a grammar school there, and Mary Weir, his wife.
Left fatherless at an early age, James spent much of his youth at Ramelton, County Donegal, under the care of his brother Edward, minister of the Presbyterian congregation there.
It was a time of bitter controversy, and, though himself an upholder of the catholic doctrine of the Trinity, Reid had the respect of the Arian party, which was then on the eve of secession.
In April 1841 he was presented by Queen Victoria as Professorship of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Glasgow in place of Rev Prof William McTurk.
[2] Reid published in 1824 a Brief Account of the Irish Presbyterian Church in the Form of Question and Answer; The Sabbath, a Tract for the Times; and Seven Letters to Dr. Elrington, Professor of Divinity in Trinity College, Dublin, "occasioned by his Animadversions in his ‘Life of Ussher’ on certain Passages in the History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland", Glasgow, 1849 (addressed to Charles Richard Elrington).