James Kwak is a writer, scholar, and musician. He is currently working at the Office of Federal Student Aid in the U.S. Department of Education on the launch of the 2025-2026 Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Until 2022, he was the Jesse Root Professor of Law at the University of Connecticut School of Law. He has been a member of the board of directors of the Southern Center of Human Rights since 2013 and was the chairperson of the board from 2019 to 2022.

James is the author or co-author of five books:

• The Fear of Too Much Justice: Race, Poverty, and the Persistence of Inequality in the Criminal Courts (2023), with Stephen B. Bright

• Take Back Our Party: Restoring the Democratic Legacy (2019)

• Economism: Bad Economics and the Rise of Inequality (2017)

• White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters To You (2012), a Wall Street Journal business bestseller, with Simon Johnson

• 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown (2010), a New York Times bestseller, also with Simon Johnson

James has published academic papers in a wide range of fields including retirement savings, social insurance, regulatory capture, corporate law, and the taxation of capital income. He was a co-author of The Baseline Scenario, for several years a leading blog covering economics and public policy. His articles have appeared in many publications, including Democracy, The American Prospect, Washington Monthly, Finance and Development, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times, and on the websites of The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, NPR, Foreign Policy, and The Financial Times.

James served as a volunteer policy consultant for the 2022 Stacey Abrams gubernatorial campaign. In 2001, he co-founded Guidewire Software. Prior to Guidewire, he worked at McKinsey and Company and Ariba. James has an A.B. in social studies from Harvard, a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley, and a J.D. from the Yale Law School.

James attended the Preparatory Division of the Juilliard School. He was principal cellist and later music director of the Harvard-Radcliffe Bach Society Orchestra and principal cellist of the UC Berkeley Symphony. He plays cello regularly in the New England Repertory Orchestra and the Worcester Symphony Orchestra and occasionally in the Keene Chamber Orchestra. He also plays in the orchestra of the Wagner in Vermont Festival.