Dr. Jordyne James, PsyD, LMSW
Dr. Jordyne James, PsyD, LMSW, is a clinical and forensic psychologist in Newport Beach, California, specializing in juvenile justice and adult criminal evaluations.
Dr. James is a licensed clinical psychologist with specialty training in forensic evaluation and juvenile justice. She earned her doctorate in clinical psychology from Pepperdine University, and also holds a master’s degree in social work from the University of Southern California. In addition to her practice as a psychologist, she remains a licensed social worker in New York, a background that gives her unique fluency in the systems that surround her cases: dependency court, probation, child welfare, and detention.
She completed her doctoral internship at UC Davis Children’s Hospital in partnership with the Sacramento County Probation Department, a competitive training program with accredidation by the American Psychological Association. She was then selected for the program’s postdoctoral specialty fellowship in juvenile and adult forensic psychology. Across those two years she trained at the CAARE Center, UC Davis’s abuse evaluation and treatment clinic, and inside the Sacramento County Youth Detention Facility. Her evaluations spanned juvenile competency and culpability, which address whether a young person can meaningfully participate in a defense and how developmental maturity bears on responsibility; adult competency to stand trial; the insanity defense; violence and sexual offense risk in both youth and adults; child welfare questions; intellectual and cognitive functioning; and malingering, meaning the deliberate exaggeration or fabrication of symptoms, a question that surfaces in nearly every forensic case and that comparatively few clinicians are trained to rigorously evaluate.
Her forensic experience began well before her fellowship and reaches beyond juvenile court. At Patton State Hospital, a maximum-security state psychiatric facility, she evaluated patients committed after being found not guilty by reason of insanity and patients held under extended commitments as mentally disordered offenders. At the federal prison on Terminal Island she conducted intake and risk assessments and treated adults with acute psychiatric needs, including psychosis and active suicidal and homicidal risk. She has also worked on the civil side, administering neuropsychological testing to adults with traumatic brain injury and post-concussion syndrome for reports prepared in mass tort, personal injury, and damages litigation. Earlier, as a forensic social worker with the Legal Aid Society of New York City, she interviewed youth in detention centers and foster placements, built disposition plans, drafted affidavits, and provided courtroom testimony. She began that chapter of her career as a fellow in the United States House of Representatives, in the office of Congressmember Karen Bass, advocating for constituents with claims against the Department of Veterans Affairs, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the Department of Justice.
At Curry Psychology Group she conducts forensic evaluations in juvenile justice and adult criminal matters, including competency, risk assessment, and eligibility for mental health diversion under California Penal Code section 1001.36.
Dr. James is also a practicing therapist. She provides trauma-informed individual and group treatment to adolescents and young adults, including Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and has done that work both with detained youth and with families in an outpatient clinic. She supervises doctoral trainees at UC Davis, has taught at Pepperdine and lectured at USC, and has presented on forensic evaluation and on youth involved in both delinquency and dependency court. She was named a GSEP Diversity Scholar and a Hilton Foundation Fellow at Pepperdine, and she is a former national debate champion. Her reports are clear and carefully reasoned, written to hold up under cross-examination while remaining readable for judges, attorneys, and juries. She is bright, warm, and easy to talk with, traits that make her an effective and highly sought after therapist and expert witness.