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James Alger Fee, born in Pendleton, Oregon on September 24, 1888, graduated from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington in 1910. He earned a degree in law from Columbia University in New York City, New York, in 1914, proceeding to serve as a sitting judge on the Circuit Court of Oregon from 1931 to 1954, and as chief judge from 1936 through 1954. He went on to work as a United States Circuit judge with the Court of Appeals (Ninth Circuit) from 1954 to 1959. He entered the United States Air Force to serve in World War One in August of 1917. Despite being placed into reserve later that year, Fee continued to act as a member of the War Department in Washington, D.C., advancing to lieutenant colonel and assistant chief of staff for the 41st Division by 1939. He was the chairman of the Board of Overseers of Whitman College from 1936 to 1959, worked for the Columbia Law Review and the Multnomah County Law Library, was a founding member of the academic society Phi Beta Kappa, and was a member of the American Law Institute, the American Bar Association, the Oregon State Bar Association, the American Legion, the National Guard, and social fraternity Beta Theta Pi. He died August 25, 1959, while attending the annual convention of the American Bar Association, to which he had just been elected chairman of the Section on Judicial Administration.