Ronald M. James is an American folklorist and historian.
James attended the University of Nevada, Reno where he obtained a dual bachelor's degree in anthropology and history in 1978 and a Master of Arts degree in medieval history in 1981. He subsequently studied at the Irish Department of Folklore at University College, Dublin, and was an I.T.T fellow studying folklore from 1981 until 1982.
James was the Nevada state historic preservation officer from 1983 until 2013.
In 2014, he was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. In 2016, he was elected a bard of the Gorsedh Kernow.
James has written or co-written over 13 books, and numerous chapters and articles. He contributed over 100 entries in the Online Nevada Encyclopedia. He was a boardmember and manuscript referee for the The Western Historical Quarterly, and was a boardmember and chairman of the National Historic Landmarks Committee. He was also executive director of the Comstock Foundation for History and Culture from 2013 until 2015.
In 2012, he wrote Virginia City: Secrets of a Western Past. In 2014, he published A Short History of Virginia City with Susan A. James.
He wrote the The Folklore of Cornwall: The Oral Tradition of a Celtic Nation in 2018. The book is a study of 19th century Cornish folklore, focusing on both its unique features and its interconnections with other cultures. Elissa Henken, in the Journal of Folklore Research Reviews, called it "a gift to Cornish studies, an easy-to-read, scholarly work, which provides historic and theoretic perspective along with its valuable body of cultural information." Writing for the The Irish Times, Seaghan Mac an tSionnaigh called it "an apt introduction both to Cornwall and to folklore".
In 2023, he published Monumental Lies: Early Nevada Folklore of the Wild West. Mark Maynard of the Nevada Historical Society praised the book, writing that " The hard work the author has done to find, categorize, and make sense of these localized stories is too important to be ignored."