James B. Murray Jr. is Founder and Chairman of the Board of the Presidential Precinct, President of Murray Enterprises and managing partner of Greenmont Timber Partners and Greenmont Farms, LLC. He also acted as former managing general partner at Court Square Ventures.  Prior to Court Square Ventures, Mr. Murray was founding partner and chairman of Columbia Capital, which today manages seven venture funds aggregating over $4 billion.  He has been a principal in firms specializing in investment banking and venture capital since 1982. 

During his career, Mr. Murray served as director of over three dozen technology companies, including some seven firms that were IPOs, publicly listed, or merged into public companies.  He is former Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Export-Import Bank of the United States.  Mr. Murray also served on the American Board of the Smurfit Graduate School of Business Administration, University College, Dublin, Ireland.

Mr. Murray is the author of Wireless Nation: The Frenzied Launch of the Cellular Revolution in America, the first definitive account of how the American cell phone industry evolved (selected by Booklist as one of the “top ten” business books of 2001).  As an inventor, he is the holder of a U.S. patent for a wireless maritime ignition control system.

Mr. Murray has been a guest lecturer at Harvard Business School; the Darden School of Business and the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia; the Mason Business School at the College of William and Mary; the Smurfit Graduate Business School in Dublin, and at Piedmont Virginia Community College.

Mr. Murray is a former member of the Board of Visitors and former Rector at the College of William and Mary.  He is former chairman of the President’s Monroe Commission overseeing re-development of James Monroe’s “Highland”, and former Chairman of the Charlottesville – Albemarle Community Foundation.  From 2001 through 2009, he served as Chairman of the Virginia Governor’s Commission on Higher Education Board Appointments.

Mr. Murray was appointed to the University of Virginia’s Board of Visitors by Governor McAuliffe in 2016 and reappointed by Governor Northam in 2020.  From July 1, 2017 until June 30, 2021, Mr. Murray served first as vice rector and then as rector.

Mr. Murray received his B.A. from the University of Virginia, a J.D. from the Marshall-Whyte School of Law at the College of William and Mary, and an honorary Doctor of Laws from the College of William and Mary.