James studied composition with Robin Holloway at Cambridge University, where he was a Music Scholar and Choral Exhibitioner at Girton College. He has had works performed and recorded by English Voices (Britten Festival), the choir of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, the Choirs of Trinity, Selwyn and Girton College in Cambridge and the Cambridge New Music Society. He has been commissioned to pieces for the internationally renowned organist Guy Bovet and for James Bowman with the Chiesa Consort, the last of which won the 2006 Choir and Organ magazine carol competition.

He has written scores for numerous theatrical productions, most recently his award-winning 2007 total Fringe sell-out show Tony Blair – the Musical (“runs the melodic gamut from near-Weillian severity to knowingly schmaltzy balladry, and is packed with rich, tight harmonies” – The Daily Telegraph) and his 2006 one-man show The Rise and Fall of Deon Vonniget (“very funny…fantastically skewed” – the New York Times). Other productions, as both a composer and musical director, include Oedipus (Catmalogian Theatre Company, 2002), With Blacks (a new piece for the Alight Here Festival, London, 2003), A Drink with the Uncertainty Division (Edinburgh, 2004), Lost! (London, 2005), Richard Taylor’s Whistle Down the Wind (Cambridge, 2005), NewsRevue (London, 2008) and Lysistrata (Watford, 2009). He has also scored several short films, including The Ghost of Kirkton Fell (Hired Thugs Productions, 2004), Summer's End (Hired Thugs Productions, 2005) and Hide and Seek (Talk to Rex Productions, 2006). For several years he has taught composition and 20th Century Music in the Cambridge University Music Faculty.

James is currently composer-in-residence at Bedford school.