James H. Payne

James Hardy Payne (March 5, 1941 – December 2, 2025) was a United States district judge in Oklahoma, sitting simultaneously on the federal courts for the Eastern, the Northern and the Western districts.

Life and career James Hardy Payne was born on March 5, 1941, in Lubbock, Texas. He graduated from Stamford High School in 1959. He attended the University of Oklahoma on a football scholarship, graduating in 1963. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma College of Law with a Juris Doctor in 1966. From 1966 until 1970, he was on active duty as a judge advocate general in the United States Air Force. He continued as an Air Force reservist from 1975 until 1992.

From 1970 until 1973, Payne worked as an assistant United States attorney for the Eastern District of Oklahoma. In 1973, he entered private practice as lawyer for the firm of Sandlin and Payne, working as a partner to Robert Forney Sandlin (1934-2015), in Muskogee, Oklahoma.

In 1988, Payne was appointed a United States magistrate judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma, based in Muskogee.

Required to file annual financial disclosure forms, judges are expected to regulate themselves. Most district courts have computer systems designed to help monitor such conflicts of interest, but judges must enter their financial information and use it. The clerk's office of neither the Northern nor Eastern District Courts participate in monitoring, as this office does in some other courts.