James has operated across clubs, leagues and federations during a 17-year career in professional sport, gaining a wealth of experience at organisations in England, the United States and Europe.
Reporting into new sporting director Paul Mitchell, he will be a key support to the club's performance, medical, sports science, nutrition and psychology teams, helping to drive an elite performance culture and cohesive approach across the men's first team, Academy and Newcastle United Women.
Starting out at Southampton in 2007, James oversaw the physical development of players at St Mary's for seven years, becoming head of athletic development as the Saints rose from League One to compete in the Premier League.
He subsequently joined the Premier League as its head of elite performance, supporting all clubs in the development of performance and medical standards, including multi-club projects such as league-wide injury surveillance and monitoring.
James crossed the Atlantic to become US Soccer's first ever director of high performance in 2017, driving new standards across all 21 of the United States' national men's and women's teams.
In 2020, he returned to Europe to join Paul Mitchell at AS Monaco, becoming the club's director of performance.
There, James oversaw a modern, multi-faceted performance department, with the core objective of enabling high performing athletic players to play high intensity football over consecutive games while maintaining a low injury record.
James said: "I am proud and excited to join such an historic and ambitious club as its new performance director.
"Newcastle United and the city are going through an exciting time of growth and development and I cannot wait to start contributing to the club's future successes.
"My role will be to ensure that we push in every area of performance and medicine to optimise the health, fitness and wellbeing of players, ultimately ensuring they are available to perform at the highest level, week in week out."
Darren Eales, Newcastle United's CEO, said: "James is an accomplished and innovative performance director and we are delighted he has chosen to join us.
"He has dedicated his career to helping players to be at their optimum levels, bringing a range of departments and services together to provide the best possible foundations for elite performance.
"James will be of great support to the talented players and staff we already have in place, and his strong working relationship with Paul Mitchell will be an asset to us as we continue to strive to be best in class."
