David Geraint James FRCP (2 January 1922 - 20 October 2010) was a Welsh doctor, who specialised in sarcoidosis.
He was born in Treherbert, Wales and trained at the University of Cambridgeand the Middlesex Hospital, London. He joined the wartime Royal Navy and served as doctor to a small fleet of minesweepers. After the war he returned to London and went to work for Professor John Scadding at the Brompton Chest Hospital, where he first became interested in sarcoidosis.
In 1959 he moved to the Royal Northern Hospital in Holloway Road, London and set up a sarcoidosis clinic which gained a world wide reputation, where studies of the pathophysiology and pathogenesis of the disease were carried out and treatment regimes developed. In 1958, he organised the first international conference on sarcoidosis at the Brompton Hospital, which led to the formation of the World Association of Sarcoidosis and other Granulomatous Disorders (WASOG) with James as its founder President.
In 1974 he was elected President of the Medical Society of London.
In 1999, he co-edited the standard textbook on the subject of sarcoidosis, The Granulomatous Disorders, with Professor Alimuddin Zumla.
On 15 December 1951 he married Professor Dame Sheila Sherlock, an eminent hepatologist, with whom he had two daughters, Amanda and Auriole.
James died on 20 October 2010.