Reverend James Warthen Workman was born in Little Rock into a family of Methodist ministers dating from colonial times. His father, James Mims Workman, was a Methodist minister and president of Henderson-Brown College; his grandfather, Col. George Thornburgh, published the Arkansas Methodist newspaper; and his great-great-grandfather, James Jenkins, was a Methodist circuit rider in South Carolina. Other family members were Methodist ministers, educators, and missionaries.

After a brief service in the army as a second lieutenant during World War I, Dr. Workman attended Henderson-Brown College and was graduated in 1919. He married Meta Sue Sparks of Fordyce, also a graduate of Henderson-Brown, in 1922. After he was licensed to preach in 1920 in the Little Rock District Conference, he attended Yale University, where he earned an A.B. (1921), M. Div. (1923), and an M.A. (1924). His first pastorate was in New Haven at the Epworth Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1924 he was ordained a deacon at the James Street Church of Brooklyn, in the New York East Conference. From 1924 until 1927, as a member of the North Arkansas Conference and student pastor at the Central Methodist Church, he taught the first Bible course at the University of Arkansas and started its Wesley Foundation. He also served four months as interim superintendent of the newly established Mount Sequoyah Western Methodist Assembly.

During 1927 he taught a course in the Bible at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, started its Wesley Foundation, and was ordained an elder in the Western Oklahoma Conference at Chickasaw. He succeeded his father as the youngest president of Henderson-Brown College during the academic year 1928-1929. That year the state purchased the Arkadelphia campus, now Henderson State University, and Henderson-Brown joined Hendrix College to make Hendrix the only Methodist college in Arkansas.

In the summer of 1929, he taught a course in religious education at Emory University before serving a term as Presiding Elder of the Pine Bluff District of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Later that year he assumed the pastorate of the First Methodist Church in Conway. In 1934 he returned to Fayetteville, where he became pastor of the Central United Methodist Church, one of several positions he would hold until his departure for Chicago in 1940. He remained in Chicago until 1946 as an Associate Director of the National Department of Stewardship of the Methodist Church. He came back to Arkansas to become pastor of the First Methodist Church in North Little Rock. In 1953 he went to Lone Star, Texas, to undertake the first industrial chaplaincy of the Lone Star Steel Company, and to help organize a Methodist church.

He returned to Arkansas in 1956, where, for the remainder of his ministry, he held pastorates in Beebe, Dardanelle, and Scott. In 1971 he retired to Conway but continued to serve as a part-time chaplain at the Veterans Administration and as a pastor for the Presbyterian Village Retirement Center, both in Little Rock. Dr. Workman wrote two books, numerous articles for Methodist publications, and in 1952-1953, a weekly column on religion for the Arkansas Gazette. Known for his good humor, he was a popular speaker at civic and church events and a frequent lecturer at student and youth conferences. A sports fan and golfer, he was also a member of several community organizations, such as the Rotary Club and the American Legion.