From 2008 to 2025 James served in the federal career service. From 2018 to 2025 he served at the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). James served as the Deputy Director for the Division of Public Interest Examinations (DPIE) and was responsible for affordable housing, fair lending, minority and women inclusion, and consumer protection supervision of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banks. Prior to that, James was the founding director of the Office of Fair Lending Oversight (OFLO) at FHFA, where he built the consumer protection and fair lending oversight functions at the agency. James served as FHFA’s representative on the Property Appraisal and Valuation Equity (PAVE) taskforce, and led the policy implementation of FHFA’s public appraisal datasets.
From 2013 to 2018, James served as a Senior Counsel in the Office of Regulations at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). At CFPB he wrote numerous regulations, served as the team leader for the Dodd-Frank Act Section 1071 small business data rule, contributed significantly to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act rules, led the safe harbor for the Uniform Residential Loan Application, and served as the head of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA)/Regulation B regulatory guidance group responsible for providing informal compliance guidance to regulated parties.
James also served as a fair housing Trial Attorney at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) from 2008 to 2013. At HUD he contributed to several HUD rulemakings (including the Fair Housing Act disparate impact rule), served as the agency representative on the Department of Justice Limited English Proficiency (LEP) taskforce, and worked on numerous fair housing and civil rights cases and matters.
James has also worked as an instructor and course developer for the National Fair Housing Training Academy where he trained fair housing investigators and attorneys.