Meet James Galyean

James grew up in Boiling Springs, South Carolina, with one family stop in the Dallas, Texas area. He graduated from Boiling Springs High School by the barest of margins (thanks Mrs. Farr for that one point!) and went on to study Political Science and History at Furman University, graduating in 1993.  After taking some time off to help manage his family’s business, he attended law school at the University of South Carolina, graduating in 1998.

While there, he met Jenna Rowell, a Westside High graduate, when they were each on a date with other folks.  After she turned him down the first dozen times, he managed to convince her to take him to the movies.  Something like twenty-two years later, they have five children and haven’t been to a movie theater in years.  Mitchell, Sarah Mills, Eliza Grey, India and Porter are more than enough entertainment.

After law school, James spent two years working at the South Carolina Supreme Court while Jenna moved to Washington, D.C. to pursue a master’s degree in national security policy at George Washington University. They married in 2000, and James decided that what Washington really needed was another lawyer, so he moved up to D.C.  The newlyweds planned on staying just two years and then returning to South Carolina so James could hang out a shingle and start building a legal practice.  Events would soon change the Galyean’s plans to return to South Carolina.

Being evacuated from Capitol Hill on September 11, 2001, with police and security forces yelling at people to run, James saw firsthand the fear and shock of his fellow citizens.  He had been headed to the Senate floor when Flight 93 augured into that hallowed Pennsylvania field. Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick, and the other passengers may very well have saved his life that day.  James remembers them often.  He spent the next six years working primarily on national security issues, with the Supreme Court nominations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito interspersed between battles over how the nation would gather intelligence, detain terrorists, and protect interrogators.  Jenna spent part of that time on the National Security Council staff at the White House doing far more important things.

Mitchell was born in January of 2005, his arrival interrupting a very important meeting James had planned for months. He doesn’t remember what it was about. During this time, James also participated in filing briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and Boumediene v. Bush, fighting to keep terrorists locked at Guantanamo Bay and out of our federal courts.  In 2007, he and Jenna brought Sarah Mills home in March and brought their growing family home to South Carolina in August.

In September of 2007, James joined the Office of the United States Attorney for the District of South Carolina as an Assistant United States Attorney. He primarily prosecuted drug trafficking, immigration, and gang-related crimes. Eventually, a favorite and recently retired judge called and offered him a job in private practice with Nexsen Pruet. James was a partner with the firm until 2018, his practice focusing on corporate litigation and white-collar criminal defense.  He is admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of South Carolina and the Supreme Court of the United States. He now heads up a development group, which has a number of ongoing efforts, but the school projects are his favorites. James and his family attend Christ Reformed Church in Anderson, an Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.  He has served on the boards of the Anderson Crisis Pregnancy Center, TriCounty Technical College Foundation, Upward Sports Foundation, and the Session at Christ Reformed. He reads a couple of books a week, some of them without pictures. His favorite place in the world is wherever Jenna and the kids are at the moment.