A highly intelligent FBI agent and a man of faith. James Ellison was FBI's top agent and was assigned to pursue Sarah Connor after the incident at Cyberdyne Systems. After Sarah Connor's disappearance, his stature in the agency is diminished. Nine years later, after encountering a series of unexplained cases involving Skynet, Ellison beginning to realise that Sarah was right about Skynet, its Terminators, and the impending apocalypse. Discovered a T-888 unit posing as FBI agent Robert Kester, Ellison led the agency's HRT to its location to capture it to obtain proof, only to have led 20 of his men to be killed by the cyborg. The T-888 mysteriously left him alive, suggesting that he may have a role within Skynet's plan which leading the agent to obsessively to find out what it is along of trying to stop the machines.After leaving the FBI, Ellison pursue employment from ZeiraCorp, where its CEO Catherine Weaver (whom Ellison doesn't know also a Terminator, a liquid metal infiltrator T-1001) hired him to capture Skynet's mechanical agents. Ellison is suspicious of his employer and her intentions with the Skynet technology.