James Louis Adams, Jr., was born in Selmer, TN, on October 10, 1905, to Rachel White and James Louis Adams. Adams received his A.B. (1925) and LL.B. (1926) from Cumberland University, and he was then admitted to the Tennessee bar. He worked as an underwriter for the Travelers Fire Insurance Company from 1926-1928, as a corporate buyer for Caldwell & Co. in Nashville from 1929-1930, and as an investment banker from 1931-1938. From 1939-1941, he worked as an assistant to the president of the School Business Administration at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee, and he was a dean at Shenandoah College in Dayton, Virginia, from 1941-1943. Adams’ first wife, Dixie, died in 1935. On May 7, 1945, Adams married Ruby Larson. Adams studied law at Vanderbilt from 1946-1947 and started a private practice in Selmer, Tennessee. He was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1952 and 1957 and a delegate-elect in 1965. Adams died in Selmer, Tennessee, on December 25, 1964.