James has been the recipient of numerous awards, commissions and honors including: the 2001 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP, Meet The Composer, the American Music Center, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Chicago Ensemble (Chicago, IL), the Auros Group for New Music (Boston, MA), the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble (San Francisco, CA), Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra's Fresh Ink, the SCI/ASCAP Student Composition Commission, and The Commission Project (Rochester, NY) among others.

Recent performances and commissions include; continuing hearings of Snapshot by the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, the Holyoke Civic Symphony (Holyoke, MA), the Sacramento Youth Symphony, the Florida All-State Orchestra and a concert band version by the FSU Symphonic Band; Shabby Chic performed by the Society for New Music at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, NY; ONE, a multimedia work with visual artist Linnea Paskow, premiered at Galapagos Art Space Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY and Pratt at Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, NY; the New York City premiere of Displace by the Sirius String Quartet (NYC); the premiere of Boondoggle by the Reizen Ensemble (NYC); a new song cycle Unfulfilled for soprano Rachel Cobb premiered by Forecast Music (NYC); Crush for flute and marimba commissioned by the Guenther/Davis Duo premiered at the Florida Flute Fair in Orlando, FL; and the premiere of Rising, commissioned by the Brandon High School Orchestra in Tampa, FL for their 40th anniversary.