Reuben James was laid down on 2 April 1919 by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation of Camden, New Jersey, launched on 4 October 1919, and commissioned on 24 September 1920.

The destroyer was sunk by a torpedo attack from German submarine U-552 near Iceland on 31 October 1941,[1] resulting in the deaths of 100 crewmembers, before the United States had joined the war.

Assigned to the US Atlantic Fleet, Reuben James served in the Mediterranean Sea from 1921 to 1922 after she had left from Newport, Rhode Island, on 30 November 1920, to Zelenika, Yugoslavia, and arrived on 18 December.

In October 1921 at Le Havre, she joined the protected cruiser Olympia at ceremonies marking the return of the Unknown Soldier to the United States.

She was recommissioned on 9 March 1932, and started operating again in the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea by patrolling Cuban waters during the coup by Fulgencio Batista.

[1] At the beginning of World War II in Europe in September 1939, the Reuben James was assigned to the Neutrality Patrol, which guarded the Atlantic and the Caribbean approaches to the American coast.