James, born on October 18, 1922, was raised in the City of Bessemer, Bessemer County, Alabama, to the late Claude and Ethel Peterson Hundley.  (their family surname was later changed from "Hundley" to "Huntley").

James, the middle child, had an older brother, the late Claude, Jr, and a younger sister, Ethel Ruby Burroughs. He was educated in the public schools of Bessemer, AL, and graduated from Dunbar High School.
 In 1939, James was accepted into Tuskegee Institute and worked his way through college until age 20 when, at the end of his junior year, he was drafted into the United States Army. At around that it time his father, Claude, died during a coal mining operation when James was only 20 years old.

During his tour of duty, he served in Italy and rose to achieve the rank of Staff Sergeant in the 92nd Infantry Division (nicknamed The Buffalo Division), the only African-American division that saw infantry combat in Europe during World War II.

Upon returning in 1945 as a veteran, James completed his senior year at Tuskegee Institute earning a Bachelor of Science degree. On New Year's Day, 1947, he relocated to Washington, D.C. The G.I. Bill allowed him to attend The Howard University School of Architecture and Planning and he became one of less than one thousand graduates of the class of 1950.

In 1953 a lovely woman named Deborah McClinton stole James' heart, and they were wed in holy matrimony. Niter Deborah's untimely passing in 1969, he met and later married Emily Carolyn Jackson, also an Alabama native. In 1971 James and Emily started a family resulting in two children, James Brian Huntley and Tonya Marie Huntley. That marriage ended in 1984.

James worked for an architectural firm in Washington, DC, for a brief period before starting his own firm located at 600 T Street, NW. From that point, he pursued independent business opportunities including real estate acquisition, product invention, and other endeavors.

In 2005, James' health began to deteriorate, causing him to become a resident of The St. Thomas More Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Hyattsville, MD. His family and friends visited and comforted him on a regular basis, including niece Gloria Jenkins, sister Ethel Burroughs, nephew Cornelius Burroughs, and son Jim.