James Lockyer is a founding director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC). He has been involved in exposing more than ten wrongful convictions in Canada, including the cases of Guy Paul Morin, David Milgaard, Clayton Johnson and Gregory Parsons . Several of these cases have become the subject of public inquiries. Mr. Lockyer is currently working on behalf of Steven Truscott, whose 1959 conviction of the murder of Lynne Harper is currently under review by the Ontario Court of Appeal, and of Robert Baltovich, whose murder conviction was quashed by the Ontario Court of Appeal in November, 2004. Mr. Baltovich is now awaiting a new trial. Mr. Lockyer taught law at McGill University and at the University of Windsor until 1977, when he went into private practice as a criminal lawyer .

Considered by many in the legal profession to be a media whore, Lockyer has been romantically linked to the fifth estate journalists Trish Wood (they have a child together) and Theresa Burke.