James Clyde, Baron Clyde

For other people named James Clyde, see James Clyde (disambiguation).

James John Clyde, Baron Clyde PC, QC (29 January 1932 – 6 March 2009) was a Scottish judge.

The son of James Latham Clyde, Lord Clyde and grandson of James Avon Clyde, Lord Clyde, was educated at Edinburgh Academy, Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in Literae Humaniores in 1954, and at the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Laws in 1959.

Clyde served in the Intelligence Corps from 1954 to 1956, and was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1959. In 1971, he became a Queens Counsel (Scotland) and was advocate-depute from 1973 to 1974. In 1972, he was made Chancellor to the Bishop of Argyll, and in 1979 Judge of the Courts of Appeal of Jersey and Guernsey, holding both posts until 1985. Between 1985 and 1996, Clyde was Senator of the College of Justice, and in 1996 he was elected Honorary Master of the Bench of the Middle Temple. From 2003 to 2006, he was a member of the Justice Oversight Commission (Northern Ireland).

Clyde was Director of Edinburgh Academy from 1979 to 1988 and Vice-President of the Royal Blind Asylum and School from 1987 until his death. He was Hon. President of the Scottish Young Lawyers' Association between 1988 and 1997, Governor of the Napier Polytechnic and University between 1989 and 1993, and assessor to the Chancellor of the Edinburgh University between 1989 and 1997. He chaired the 1992 Orkney child abuse inquiry.

On 1 October 1996, he was appointed Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and additionally a life peer with the title Baron Clyde, of Briglands in Perthshire. In the same year he was invested as a Privy Counsellor. He retired as a Lord Of Appeal in Ordinary in 2001.

Lord Clyde married Ann Clunie Hoblyn in 1963; they had two sons.