Jim Justice

James Conley Justice II (born April 27, 1951) is an American politician and businessman serving since 2025 as the junior United States senator from West Virginia. A member of the Republican Party, he served from 2017 to 2025 as the 36th governor of West Virginia. Justice was once a billionaire, but his net worth was estimated at $664.2 million in 2025, making him the richest U.S. senator as of that year. He inherited a coal mining business from his father that included 94 companies. He and his family own the Greenbrier, a luxury resort and National Historic Landmark in White Sulphur Springs.

In 2015, Justice announced his candidacy for governor in 2016. Although a registered Republican before running for governor, he ran as a Democrat and defeated the Republican nominee, Bill Cole. Less than seven months after taking office, Justice switched back to the Republican Party after announcing his plans at a rally with President Donald Trump in the state. He was reelected in 2020.

Justice was elected to the Senate in 2024, winning the seat previously held by Joe Manchin. Defeating U.S. representative Alex Mooney in the primary and the Democratic nominee, former Wheeling mayor Glenn Elliott, in the general election, Justice became the first Republican to win that seat since 1956.

James Conley Justice II was born to James Conley Justice and Edna Ruth (née Perry) Justice in Charleston, West Virginia. He grew up in Raleigh County, West Virginia, graduating from Woodrow Wilson High School in Beckley in 1969. He enrolled at the University of Tennessee on an athletic scholarship for golf but transferred to Marshall University. At Marshall, he was a two-year captain on the Thundering Herd golf team. He earned his bachelor's degree and Master of Business Administration from Marshall.

After college, Justice went into the family agriculture business. He founded Bluestone Farms in 1977, which now operates 50,000 acres (20,000 ha) of farmland, and is the leading producer of grain on the East Coast of the United States. During that time, he also developed Stoney Brook Plantation, a 15,000-acre hunting and fishing preserve in Monroe County. Justice is a seven-time national corn growing champion. After his father's death in 1993, Justice inherited ownership of Bluestone Industries and Bluestone Coal Corporation. In 2009, he sold some of his coal business to the Russian company Mechel for $568 million. In 2015, after a huge drop in the price of coal led Mechel to close some of the mines, he bought the business back for $5 million. Since buying back the mine from Mechel, Justice reopened several of the mines and hired over 200 miners.

As of 2014, Justice owned 70 active mines in five states. His charitable donations included $25 million to the James C. Justice National Scout Camp at Summit Bechtel Reserve, $5 million to Marshall University, and $10 million to the Cleveland Clinic.

Justice's mining companies have been scrutinized for alleged cases of safety violation and unpaid taxes; in 2016, NPR called him the nation's "top mine safety delinquent". Justice allegedly owed millions of dollars to the government in back taxes and unpaid coal mining fees and fines. Two debt-related lawsuits were settled in 2019, and in 2020 mining companies Justice or his family owned agreed to pay $5 million in delinquent safety fines. Separately, Justice agreed in 2025 to pay $5.2 million in overdue personal income taxes that, according to the Justice Department, originated in 2009.

Before taking office as governor, Justice resigned from all the executive positions he held. He placed his daughter Jill in charge of the Greenbrier and his son Jay in charge of his mining and agriculture businesses. He said he would place all his assets in a blind trust but that the process would take time because of their complexity.

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Justice and his family's businesses received between $11 million and $24 million in aid from the Paycheck Protection Program. His luxury resort, the Greenbrier Hotel Corporation, received a loan of between $5 million and $10 million. The company did not promise to retain any jobs in exchange for the loan, which the Greenbrier would have to repay if it did not use at least 60% of the funds for payroll.

In 2015, Justice declared his candidacy for governor of West Virginia in the 2016 election as a member of the Democratic Party. He had been a registered member of the Republican Party until changing his registration in February 2015. This was his first time running for political office. Justice was endorsed by the United Mine Workers. In May 2016, Justice won the Democratic nomination for governor.

During the general election campaign, Justice campaigned on improving the state's track record on education, encouraging the continued usage of coal, increasing tourism, and tackling the budget deficit and the opioid crisis. He refused to endorse Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee in that year's presidential election, citing her stance on phasing out coal energy.

Justice defeated Republican nominee Bill Cole in the November general election.

In January 2019, Justice declared his candidacy for reelection. This time, he ran as a Republican, having changed his party registration after an August 2017 rally with President Donald Trump. He defeated multiple challengers in the Republican primary.

In the general election campaign, Justice focused on his COVID-19 response, the state's budget surplus, and his work on the substance abuse crisis. Several polls had him leading by a large margin over Kanawha County commissioner Ben Salango in the months preceding Election Day. On November 3, 2020, he defeated Salango with over 63% of the vote to Salango's 30%. With his win, he became the first West Virginian Republican gubernatorial candidate to win since Cecil H. Underwood in 1996 and the first GOP incumbent to win a second term since Arch A. Moore Jr. in 1972.

In April 2023, Justice announced his candidacy for the 2024 United States Senate election in West Virginia. Justice defeated U.S. Representative Alex Mooney for the Republican nomination with 61 percent of the vote. The Democratic incumbent, Joe Manchin, did not run for reelection. Justice defeated Glenn Elliott, the former Democratic mayor of Wheeling, West Virginia, in the November 5 general election.

On December 26, 2024, Justice announced that he would complete his gubernatorial term, which ended on January 13, 2025, before joining the Senate, reducing his Senate term by 10 days. He was sworn in on January 14 by Senate President pro tempore Chuck Grassley.

Justice missed the first roll-call vote of his Senate tenure, on an amendment to the Laken Riley Act. When President Donald Trump announced across-the-board tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China in January 2025, Justice applauded the move, saying, "Everybody runs through the streets saying, 'The sky is falling! The sky is falling!', but it doesn't fall."

On the 15th day of the 2025 U.S. government shutdown, Justice hosted a birthday party for his bulldog Babydog at the Capitol.

Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry

Justice began his gubernatorial campaign and political career as a conservative Democrat. Time identified him as a moderate Democrat. He switched to the Republican Party a few months after taking office and declared his support for President Donald Trump, to whose reelection campaign he contributed $200,000. Since his switch, Justice has been described as a moderate or liberal Republican by his 2024 primary opponent Alex Mooney and by Sam Brodey, writing for The Daily Beast.

Justice campaigned and has governed with support for the coal industry. He opposes raising taxes but has supported increasing teachers' salaries, arguing that increased state revenue will pay for the increased budget spending. In 2017, Justice said that he opposed budget cuts and supported raising sales taxes. The libertarian Cato Institute gave Justice an "F" grade based on their positions, but Justice voiced his disagreement with the grade. Before Justice switched from a Democrat to a Republican, Senate president Mitch Carmichael called him "more Republican in his philosophies", saying, "where he has gotten away from that a little bit is his tax-and-spend policies".

In February 2021, Justice urged Senator Joe Manchin to vote for the $1.9 trillion stimulus package proposed by President Joe Biden, warning against being "fiscally responsible" and adding, "I don't really know exactly what the thinking could possibly be there. I mean, we got people that are really hurting."

Of proposals to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, Justice said, "it's really, really hard to say one size fits all" nationwide. He added, "to be able to make it on 7 or 8 dollars an hour, that's really, really tough", while also expressing concern that too high a minimum wage could lead to unemployment.

Justice had said that he opposes abortion, but that the Supreme Court had decided the issue. Later, he attended a rally supporting Amendment 1, a state constitutional amendment banning abortion once Roe v. Wade was overturned. In September 2022, after Roe v. Wade was overturned, Justice signed into law a bill banning abortion at any stage of pregnancy, with exceptions for medical emergencies and victims of rape or incest. He has said that he stood "rock solid for life" as governor.

Justice met his wife, Cathy Justice (née Comer) in high school. They have two children. Justice and his wife are members of First Baptist Church in Beckley, a congregation of the American Baptist Churches USA. He is 6 feet 7 inches (2.01 m) tall and 368 pounds (167 kg). Justice is a lifelong fan of the New Orleans Saints of the National Football League, and spent $30 million to develop a training camp for the team to use in 2014 at the Greenbrier. Until 2019, he hosted the Greenbrier Classic, a PGA Tour event, at the Greenbrier annually.

Justice lives in Lewisburg, West Virginia. He was sued about his residency by former state house assistant minority whip Isaac Sponaugle on the basis that Justice did not live in the West Virginia Governor's Mansion in Charleston. The state constitution requires the governor to "reside at the seat of government", Charleston. The lawsuit was eventually put before the West Virginia State Supreme Court, which denied a motion for a writ of prohibition. Chief Justice Evan Jenkins defined "reside" in terms of statewide officeholders. On March 2, Justice resolved the lawsuit, agreeing to reside in Charleston and paying Sponaugle's legal fees.