James Harvey Robinson was an American scholar of history who, with Charles Austin Beard, founded New History, a disciplinary approach that attempts to use history to understand contemporary problems, which greatly broadened the scope of historical scholarship in relation to the social sciences.

James Hayden Tufts (1862–1942), an influential American philosopher, was a professor of the then newly founded Chicago University. Tufts was also a member of the Board of Arbitration, and the chairman of a committee of the social agencies of Chicago. The work Ethics in 1908 was a collaboration of Tufts and John Dewey. Tufts believed in a conception of mutual influences which he saw as opposed in both Marxism and idealism.

James Hilton was an English novelist and screenwriter. He is best remembered for his novels Lost Horizon, Goodbye, Mr. Chips and Random Harvest, as well as co-writing screenplays for the films Camille (1936) and Mrs. Miniver (1942), the latter earning him an Academy Award.

James Hogg was a Scottish poet, novelist and essayist who wrote in both Scots and English. As a young man he worked as a shepherd and farmhand, and was largely self-educated through reading. He was a friend of many of the great writers of his day, including Sir Walter Scott, of whom he later wrote an unauthorised biography. He became widely known as the "Ettrick Shepherd", a nickname under which some of his works were published, and the character name he was given in the widely read series Noctes Ambrosianae, published in Blackwood's Magazine. He is best known today for his novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. His other works include the long poem The Queen's Wake (1813), his collection of songs Jacobite Relics (1819), and his two novels The Three Perils of Man (1822), and The Three Perils of Woman (1823).

James Holman FRS, known as the "Blind Traveller," was a British adventurer, author and social observer, best known for his writings on his extensive travels. Completely blind and experiencing pain and limited mobility, he undertook a series of solo journeys that were unprecedented both in their extent of geography and method of "human echolocation". In 1866, the journalist William Jerdan wrote that "From Marco Polo to Mungo Park, no three of the most famous travellers, grouped together, would exceed the extent and variety of countries traversed by our blind countryman." In 1832, Holman became the first blind person to circumnavigate the globe. He continued travelling, and by October 1846 had visited every inhabited continent.

James Gibbons Huneker was an American art, book, music, and theater critic. A colorful individual and an ambitious writer, he was "an American with a great mission," in the words of his friend, the critic Benjamin De Casseres, and that mission was to educate Americans about the best cultural achievements, native and European, of his time. From 1892 to 1899, he was the husband of the sculptor Clio Hinton.

James Jackson Jarves (1818–1888) was an American newspaper editor, and art critic who is remembered above all as the first American art collector to buy Italian primitives and Old Masters.

James Janeway (1636–1674) was a Puritan minister and author who, after John Bunyan, had the widest and longest popularity as the author of works read by English-speaking children.

James Jeffrey Roche was an Irish-American poet, journalist and diplomat. Roche emigrated as a young child, and grew up in Prince Edward Island, Canada. He came to Boston in 1866, and joined the staff of the Irish newspaper. He became editor-in-chief in 1890, and was a leading spokesman for Catholic intellectuals in New England. When most Democrats in the region deserted William Jennings Bryan in 1896, Roche and the Boston Pilot gave Brian strong support. At the end of his life he was the American Consul in Switzerland.

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922) is a landmark in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, particularly stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, letters, and occasional journalism.