James attended Taft High School in San Antonio. After school he studied at New York University's Experimental Theatre Wing, Roday studied theatre and earned a bachelor's degree in fine arts (BFA) in the 1997. He began his professional on-camera career in the late ‘90s, appearing in the projects, “Coming Soon”, and “Ryan Caulfield: Year One”. In the 1998 he selected the professional name James Roday as there was already another “James Rodriguez” registered in the Screen Actors Guild. Before fame James played his first movie role in the 1999 film "Coming Soon". James has acted in theatrical productions, like: “Three Sisters”, “A Respectable Wedding”, “Severity's Mistress”, and “Sexual Perversity” in Chicago.

He starred in the 2003 film “Rolling Kansas”, and appeared in the movie adaptation of “The Dukes Of Hazzard” with role of Billy Prickett in the 2005, and next year in the “Beerfest”. During the early 2000s, he become guest starring and co-starring roles on few movies and TV projects, including “Get Real”, “Repli-Kate”, “Providence”, “Showtime”, “Don't Come Knocking”. He also launched his own theater company in Los Angeles, called “Red Dog Squadron”. He starred on the TV series “Psych” as hyper-observant consultant detective and fake psychic Shawn Spencer. In addition to this work, he has also appeared in the movie, “Gamer”, and occasionally announces for the WWE.

Roday's television work include starring roles on NBC's “Miss Match” in 2003 as “Nick Paine” and Edgar “Egg” Ross in the “First Years as”. In the 2006, James was nominated for the Best Actor in a Series, Comedy or Musical for “Psych” by the Satellite Awards. He was listed as #62 in People magazine's 100 Most Beautiful People issue in 2007. James won the award for Best Lead Actor in a Drama Series at the 2nd Annual Timmys Awards in 2012, after being nominated the previous year, but lost to Hugh Laurie. He also appeared in Entertainment Tonight show.

Behind the scenes, with his partners Todd Harthan and James DeMonaco wrote the screenplay for the movie “Skinwalkers”. They also worked on a script for the film adaptation of the video game “Driver”. Roday directed his first film “Gravy” in 2013, written with Todd Harthan.

His others work on the television include: “Believe”, “Get Real”, “Thank Heaven”, “Providence”, “Fear Itself”, “Love Bites”, “Good Session”, “Christmas Eve”, “Baby Baby Baby”, “The Nerd Herd”, “Pushing Dead”.

He was not married and don’t have a wife. There is quite a bit of information about his personal life, we know that he began dating actress Maggie Lawson in 2006 and they was in a seven-year relationship. James Roday has a net worth of $3 million dollars. Roday's height is 5ft 10in (1.78 m).