Sir James was born on 6 September 1901 at Cambridge where he attended the Perse School. He received his geological education at Chelsea Polytechnic and the Royal College of Science. In 1923 he was appointed demonstrator in geology at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London University, where he stayed until 1928; for his last two years there he also served as Warden at the pioneer Imperial College hostel. While at Imperial College he studied the Shineton Shales of the Wrekin district of Shropshire under the guidance of W. W. Watts and in collaboration with his life-long friend O. M. B. Bulman, and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1925. This work in Shropshire provided the stimulus for his continuing contribution on the Cambrian system and its faunas, and on trilobites of all ages. During this period he also recorded his observations on Tertiary crabs from Zanzibar, a group he was to return to in later years. In 1928 he obtained one of the two posts offered by the Geological Survey, being appointed Geologist. He undertook field work in the Dorking district as a prelude to an intended posting to the Survey office at York, but the death of G. W. Lee, then palaeontologist in Edinburgh, determined that Stubblefield should remain at the headquarters of the Survey at Jermyn Street in London. Internal transfers of the palaeontological staff left no member available to determine the fossils then accumulating from the current survey of the Shrewsbury district, and Stubblefield was asked by the Director to undertake this task because of his knowledge of the Lower Palaeozoic faunas of Shropshire. This transfer became long-term and thus began his association with, and eventual leadership of, the Palaeontological Department of the Survey, and secured the continuation of his notable contributions to palaeontology. The Shrewsbury commitment led to visits to the area during which new faunal horizons were discovered in the local Cambrian and Ordovician, including the Nemagraptus gracilis fauna from the Breidden Hills; other finds included the then earliest British eurypterid subsequently described by L. Størmer as the type of a new genus under the name of Brachyopterus stubblefieldi.