James B. Murray, Jr.

Jim Murray is the Founder and Chairman of the Board of the Presidential Precinct, President of Murray Enterprises, Manager of Greenmont Farms and a member of the Board of the University of Virginia Investment Management Company. He is the former managing general partner of Court Square Ventures and has been a principal in firms specializing in investment banking and venture capital for telecom and information technology businesses since 1982.  Prior to Court Square Ventures, he was a founding partner and chairman of Columbia Capital, which today manages seven venture funds aggregating over $5 billion.

During his career, he has served as a director of over three dozen technology companies including some seven firms that were IPOs, publicly listed, or merged into public companies.  He is the former Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Export-Import Bank of the United States.  He also served on the American Board of the Smurfit Graduate School of Business Administration, University College, Dublin, Ireland. He is also the former managing partner of Greenmont Timber Partners.

Mr. Murray is the author of Wireless Nation: The Frenzied Launch of the Cellular Revolution in America, the first definitive account of how the American cell phone industry evolved (selected by Booklist as one of the “top ten” business books of 2001).  As an inventor, he is the holder of a U.S. patent for a wireless maritime ignition control system.

Mr. Murray has been a guest lecturer at Harvard Business School; the Darden School of Business and the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia; the Mason Business School at the College of William and Mary; the Smurfit Graduate Business School in Dublin, and at Piedmont Virginia Community College.

Mr. Murray is a former member of the Board of Visitors and former Rector at the College of William and Mary.  He is former chairman of the President’s Monroe Commission overseeing re-development of James Monroe’s “Highland”; former Chairman of the Charlottesville – Albemarle Community Foundation; and former Chairman of the Albemarle Country Industrial Development Authority.  From 2001 through 2009, he served as Chairman of the Virginia Governor’s Commission on Higher Education Board Appointments.

Mr. Murray was appointed to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors by Governor McAuliffe in 2016 and reappointed by Governor Northam in 2020.  From July 1, 2019 until June 30, 2021, Mr. Murray served first as vice rector and then as rector of the UVA board.

Mr. Murray received his B.A. from the University of Virginia, a J.D. from the Marshall-Whyte School of Law at the College of William and Mary, and an honorary Doctor of Laws from the College of William and Mary.