James R. Thompson

Thompson married an attorney, Jayne A. Carr in 1976 during his campaign for Governorship. The couple has a daughter, Samantha Jane.

James Robert Thompson was born in Chicago, Illinois, to pathologist Dr. James Robert Thompson and Agnes Josephine Thompson. James spent his childhood in the Garfield Park area and had the ambition of becoming ‘President of the US’ at a very young age.

In 1953, after graduating from high school, Thompson enrolled at the ‘University of Illinois’ in Chicago for his pre-law studies. He studied there for two years and then at ‘Washington University’ in St. Louis for a year.

He next studied at the ‘Northwestern University Law School’ and got his Juris Doctor Degree in 1959. The same year, he joined the Illinois bar and worked for five years as a prosecutor in the State Attorney’s office in Cook County.

In 1964, he joined ‘Northwestern University’ as an ‘Associate Professor’ of criminal law and taught at the University for five years.

He was appointed by President Nixon as an ‘Assistant Attorney General’ in 1969, following which he fought over 200 cases in the ‘Illinois Supreme Court’.

In 1975, Thompson quit his job and became a counsel with a law firm in Chicago. The next year, due his popularity which he earned by handling high-profile cases, he was elected as a Republican candidate for the post of ‘Governor of Illinois’.

In the 1976 elections, he defeated Democratic candidate Michael Howlett by a comfortable margin, securing about 65 percent of the votes. The next year, he assumed the office of ‘Governor of Illinois’.

His first term lasted only for two years as the state of Illinois shifted the timing of gubernatorial election to coincide with the midterm Congressional election. He was re-elected three more times and served as the ‘Governor of Illinois’ for a total of fourteen years.

During his tenure as an ‘Assistant Attorney General’, he successfully tried and convicted many prominent politicians on charges of corruption, such as Mayor Richard Daley, former Governor Otto Kerner Jr. and former U.S. Senator William Rentschler. He also fought the ground-breaking ‘Escobedo versus Illinois’ case in the ‘Supreme Court of the United States’.

He served as the ‘Governor of Illinois’ for fourteen years during which he settled complicated Labor-management issues, regularly travelled abroad to further the business interests of Illinois and also organized many trade missions to Europe, Mexico, Canada, Asia and the Middle East.