James Brown is a Non-Resident Fellow at the United States Studies Centre.

A former Australian Army officer he commanded a cavalry troop in southern Iraq, served on the Australian taskforce headquarters in Baghdad, managed operations and contingency planning for Australia's Solomon Islands mission, and was attached to Special Forces in Afghanistan.

Between 2010 and 2014 James was the Military Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy.

In 2015 he was appointed an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Sydney.

A regular contributor to Australian and international media, his first book was the acclaimed Anzac's Long Shadow: The Cost of Our National Obsession (Black Inc, 2014) and most recently he wrote the Quarterly Essay Firing Line: Australia’s path to war.

He is a past president of the RSL NSW.