James Keogh Murphy was born on September 12, 1869, in Dublin, Ireland.

He was a British surgeon, medical author, and editor. He was educated at Caius College, Cambridge University (B.A., 1st Class Honours in the Natural Science Tripos, 1891; M.B., B.Chir., M.A., 1896; M.D. 1900; M.Chir., 1904). He worked at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where he received the Lawrence Scholarship and Gold Medal. He acted as House Physician, Clinical Assistant in the Throat Department, and Demonstrator of Anatomy. He also held other posts, e.g., External Maternity Assistant at Rotunda Hospital, Dublin; Clinical Assistant at St. Peter's Hospital for Stone, London; and Clinical Assistant at Royal Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital. After becoming a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons in 1901, he was appointed Surgeon to the Miller Hospital, Assistant Surgeon to the Paddington Green Hospital for Children, and Surgeon in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in September 1906. At the beginning of World War I, in August 1914, he joined the Hospital Ship Sudan in the North Sea. He was transferred to the Royal Naval Hospital, Plymouth, where he gained the esteem of his colleagues as a man of almost encyclopedic knowledge, a physician who conformed to the saying that "a surgeon is a physician and something more." As a surgeon, he was ambidextrous and was able to undertake surgery in those departments, which in civil hospitals are the domain of the specialist. Murphy also worked as General Editor for the Oxford Medical Press. With Sir D'Arcy Power, he edited: A System of Syphilis in six volumes (London, 1908); The Practitioner's Encyclopaedia of Medicine and Surgery in all its Branches (1912; 2nd ed, 1913); and The Practitioner's Encyclopaedia of Medical Treatment (1915).

In 1897, he married Mabel Roney K. Schofield (1873-1956). He died on September 13, 1916, in Plymouth, Devon, England.