James Brendan Lynch was a consultant pathologist at St James’ Hospital, Leeds and formerly professor of pathology at the University of Khartoum, Sudan. He was born on 9 May 1921 in Wallasey, Cheshire, the third child and second son of Thomas Patrick Lynch, a teacher and headmaster, and Margaret Lynch née Pierce. He attended local schools in Wallasey and St Francis Xavier Grammar School in Liverpool and then went to the University of Liverpool to study medicine, qualifying in 1944. He was a house surgeon and senior casualty officer at Liverpool Royal Infirmary, lectured in anatomy at the University of Leeds, and then served in the Army. He was a registrar in general surgery at the Royal Southern Hospital, Liverpool and gained his FRCS in 1950. During his training he was influenced by Henry Clarence Wardleworth Nuttall and Richard Webster Doyle, both surgeons in Liverpool. He was subsequently a lecturer in pathology at the University of Leeds. Lynch then went to the University of Khartoum, where he founded the department of pathology. By the mid 1960s, he had returned to the UK: in March 1964 he gave a Hunterian Lecture at the Royal College of Surgeons of England on ‘Mycetoma in the Sudan’ (*Ann R Coll Surg Engl*. 1964 Dec;35[6]:319-40). He was appointed as a consultant pathologist in Leeds, where he was also dean for postgraduate medical education. He was the co-author of *Pathology of toxaemia in pregnancy* Edinburgh, Churchill Livingstone, 1973. Outside medicine he enjoyed golf, reading, DIY and silver craftmanship. In 1957 he married Jacqueline Fitzgerald. They had two sons. James Lynch died on 24 August 2018 at the age of 97.