James Lawrence Simmons was born on December 28, 1888, in Shelby, North Carolina. Simmons graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1909. In 1912 and 1913, he served as the president of Pure Fountain College in Smithfield, Tennessee. Resigning this position, Simmons attended Columbia University in New York in 1913. He returned to North Carolina shortly after, finished his law training, and was accepted to the bar shortly before America's entrance into World War I. During the war, Simmons served as the government appeals agent for Pitt County. In the early 1920s, he relocated to Rocky Mount where he worked as an attorney until his death on November 8, 1942.