After winning several karate championships, Kelly rose to fame in the early 1970s appearing in various action films within the martial arts and blaxploitation genres.

Kelly played opposite Bruce Lee in 1973's Enter the Dragon, and had lead roles in 1974's Black Belt Jones as the title character and Three the Hard Way as Mister Keyes.

[3] Jim began his athletic career at Bourbon County High School in Paris, Kentucky, competing in basketball, football, and track and field.

He attended the University of Louisville on a football scholarship, but left during his freshman year after a coach referred to a black teammate with a racial slur.

[12] He played Williams, a martial artist invited to a tournament run by crime lord and renegade Shaolin monk Han.

Producer Fred Weintraub had heard about Kelly's karate studio in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles, went there to see him, and was immediately impressed.

This appearance also earned Kelly a three-film contract with Warner Brothers and led to starring roles in a string of martial arts-themed blaxploitation films.

[14] The first was Black Belt Jones (1974),[15] in which he plays a local hero who fights the Mafia and a drug dealer threatening his friend's dojo.

His other two Warner Brothers films were Golden Needles (1974), with Joe Don Baker and Elizabeth Ashley,[16] and Hot Potato (1976),[17] in which he reprises his role as Black Belt Jones and rescues a diplomat's daughter from the jungles of Thailand.

[21] A deleted scene from the film Undercover Brother (2002), included on the DVD extra features, shows him in a cameo appearance with Eddie Griffin.

[22] In his last film, Kelly made a cameo appearance as Cleavon Washington in Afro Ninja (2009), produced, directed by, and starring veteran stuntman Mark Hicks.