James P. Guy II, who served as the 128th president of The Virginia Bar Association in 2016, died Jan. 21. He was 61.

Jim attended the University of Virginia for both college (1987) and law school (1990), and he joined the VBA shortly after getting his license from the bar.

Within the VBA, he served as chair of the Law Practice Management Division before stepping onto the leadership ladder. During his term as president, the VBA made plans for a bar center in downtown Richmond, now known as VBA on Main.

The same year, he arranged for the transfer of many of the VBA’s archives to the museum now known as the Virginia Museum of History and Culture.

Jim was an energy lawyer. He was a partner at LeClairRyan before becoming in-house counsel at the Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative in Southside Virginia. He and his wife Judy left Richmond, moving to a farm near Saxe.

He served as president of the Energy Bar Association’s Southern Chapter from 2024-2025.

On the EBASC’s website, Jack Robb -- who is currently chair of the VBA’s LPMD – said, “Jim was a titan in the Virginia legal community, electric cooperative community, and in energy law. He helped many of us get our start and has been a wonderful mentor and friend.”

Cliona Mary Robb, another past LPMD chair who practices energy law, said, “He will be sorely missed: the energy bar has lost one of its best with his premature passing.”

Jim was well-known as the leader of an Irish pub band, Uisce Beathea, that played regularly at Rare Olde Times Pub in Richmond’s west end. The band’s name is Gaelic for “water of life.”

In a 2003 profile in Virginia Lawyers Weekly, Jim shared that he grew up in a house filled with music, with numerous family members who played a variety of instruments.

He was having lunch one day at a now-closed pub in Richmond when he observed the owner trying to teach a man a few Irish tunes on the guitar. Jim saw them struggling and picked up the guitar, reeling off the songs that stymied them. He was asked to host a weekly open-mike night, which lasted a year.

He played several local gigs over the next few years, until the Rare Olde Times connection developed. The VLW article noted that other band members included his wife Judy and his brother Dan.

Jim served many years on the board of directors of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The VLW story noted that he had two nephews with CF and Uisce Beathea frequently gave charitable performances to benefit the foundation.

Jim’s survivors include Judy, his wife of 35 years; his children, Callaghan (Daniel MacPhee), Seamus (Olivia Echegaray), and Mairead; two granddaughters, Imogen and Aoife; his mother, Dorothy; and brothers and a sister.

In Jim’s obituary, the family quoted a Gaelic phrase, “Ní bheidh a leitheid arís ann.”

It means, “There will never be their likes again.”

--

A Mass of Christian Burial was held for Jim on Jan. 29, at St. Paul's Catholic Church in Richmond. Both Judy and Callie Guy posted that the weather prevented the completion of the funeral. They said the rite of burial will be completed Saturday, Feb. 14, at 1:00 p.m. at Mount Calvary Cemetery in Richmond.

- Paul Fletcher