Bio of James L. Thompson, Jr.
James L. Thompson, Jr. was born in the town of Dothan, Alabama in Southeast Alabama. He graduated from Troy State University in Troy, Alabama with a B.S. and a Master’s degrees in Secondary English Education. Upon completing college, James taught high school English at Henderson High School in DeKalb County Georgia near Atlanta. After four years of teaching, he resigned and joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as a Special Agent.
James served five years of distinguished service with the FBI and was stationed in two different field offices: Houston and New York. After five years, he resigned from the FBI and joined the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a Senior Special Agent in Dallas, Texas with EPA’s newly-formed Criminal Investigation Division (CID). In 2001, James was transferred and promoted to the Special Agent-in-Charge of the Philadelphia CID Regional Office.
James retired from the EPA after 18 years of commendable service in 2007 and became a licensed Private Investigator in Montgomery County; he then formed Thompson Investigations and conducted insurance fraud investigations for five years in the Philadelphia area.
Simultaneously, from 2003 to 2010 James served as an Adjunct Faculty Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania where he created and presented a graduate level course on Environmental Justice, presenting case studies on criminal investigations and regulatory enforcement with Reginald Harris, a Senior Toxicologist with EPA.
James has pursued several outside interests with much success. As an actor and voiceover artist, he has appeared in numerous television commercials, industrial films, movies and print. His most interesting success came with his collaboration on independent films with Philadelphia area filmmaker Pat Taggart and their Alpaca Pictures short films. One of their films, “Charlie Applebee”, has won several national awards and James served as co-producer. Another of their films entitled “Bird Watching” won five major awards at the 2011 Philadelphia 48 Hour Film Festival; James was one of the primary actors in the film.
In 2010 James was the catalyst behind forming the independent film production company Abuzz Filmworks. That same year James wrote, directed and produced his first short film entitled, “The Coloring” under the Abuzz Filmworks umbrella and the film gathered a lot of attention. James has since begun work on his second short entitled, “The Model Airplane Club,” about the famed Tuskegee Airmen.
In 2020, James worked as a Census Field Supervisor for the 2020 Census. Later that same year he worked with Montgomery County Voter Services to help process ballots for the 2020 Presidential Election. In March 2021, James began working with Montgomery County Pennsylvania COVID-19 Vaccination Centers where he registered clients to be vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus.
Also in 2020, James was invited to become a board member with the Greater Philadelphia Chapter of Tuskegee Airmen, Inc. (GPCTAI) where he currently serves as the Director of Communications. In 2022, James was invited to become a member of the executive board for the American Heritage Federal Credit Union in Philadelphia.
James has also authored four books with his last two being, “Just My Imagination Running Away with Me” (2023) and “Love is like Glass Slippers (2024).” In August 2023, James started his own book publishing company, Peanut City Press, LLC and has since published two books under his new imprint. With all of his recent success in book publishing, James is starting his first novel which he plans it to be a murder mystery regarding a true cold case.
James is a 1976 charter member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity on the campus of Troy University, Troy, Alabama. Many people consider James to be an energetic Renaissance man with numerous talents.
