James Mudd was born in Halifax in 1821, the son of Alice and Robert Mudd. In the late 1830s, the family moved to Manchester and James began an apprenticeship as a pattern designer. In 1846, James and his brother Robert opened their own textile design business at 44 George Street. A year earlier, James had married Ann Peacock and their only child, James Willis, was born in 1848.

James Mudd's interest in photography probably began soon after his apprenticeship. His earliest known photographs were landscapes taken using the waxed paper process in 1854. It seems likely that he learned most of what he knew about photographic techniques and processes from Joseph Sidebotham, whom he met in the same year, and Sidebotham’s teacher, John Benjamin Dancer. Dancer was an important Manchester scientific instrument maker who had practised photography since its introduction in 1839.

In 1857, James and Robert Mudd opened a photographic studio at 94 Cross Street, Manchester, where they also sold photographic equipment. By 1861, James Mudd had acquired a new studio in his own name in the fashionable area of St. Ann's Square, Manchester. He also hired an assistant, George Wardley, to help with studio portraiture. After six years, Wardley left Mudd's employment to open a studio of his own in Salford.

In about 1862, James S Platt, a pattern designer, became Mudd's business partner in the textile design business he had started with his brother. Two years later, Platt took over the design business on his own account. This suggests the photographic studio was doing well enough for Mudd to rely on it for his income.

In 1873, James Willis Mudd joined his father in the photographic studio, the new company becoming known as James Mudd & Sons. The company hired a new assistant, George Grundy, in about 1880. Grundy remained in Mudd's employment until the studio officially passed to him in about 1900, although it seems likely that he was already managing the studio before then. The business continued to be known as James Mudd & Sons until the death of Mudd in 1906, when it became G. Grundy & Sons. George Grundy stayed in business until about 1924, having moved his studio to St Ann's Passage, off King Street, Manchester.

James Mudd is thought to be the first Englishman to photograph industrial subjects on a regular basis. In 1856 he took on the first of several commissions to photograph locomotives and machinery made at the Beyer, Peacock works, Gorton, Manchester. Mudd experimented with the wet collodion process but found it too difficult to produce a picture of acceptable quality. As a result, he reverted to using waxed paper negatives for a few months, until the beginning of 1857 when he began using the dry collodion process. He then used dry collodion almost exclusively until he retired in about 1900.

In 1861, Mudd began applying dark varnish to industrial photographs to mask out the background so that the subject was clearly delineated. This was more useful for foundry records and publications than if parts of the surrounding factory intruded on the picture. Mudd's assistant, George Grundy, may have taken over the production of Beyer, Peacock photographs in the 1880s.

Mudd's photographic inventory of locomotives built by the local firm of Beyer, Peacock was published in 1861 by Cundall & Co. Mudd's success with the Beyer, Peacock photographs may have led to other non-industrial commissions. In the summer of 1857, James and Robert Mudd were commissioned to take 11 photographs as evidence for the Pendleton Alum Works indictment. James Mudd also took 'pictorial' photographs and entered many of them in important exhibitions. The first of these was a Manchester Photographic Society exhibition in 1856. He received his first medal at the 1860 Photographic Society of Scotland exhibition for Waterfall near Coniston.

Towards the end of his life, James Mudd concentrated on painting and drawing. His subjects were the landscape and marine views which had been the subjects of his exhibition photographs. He exhibited paintings at least five times in the 1880s, including some work at the Liverpool Autumn Exhibition held at the Walker Art Gallery.

In the early 1870s, Mudd was inspired to illustrate Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The drawings were published in a booklet by the Coleridge Society in Manchester.

James Mudd died in Bowdon in 1906 at the age of 85. He was a very versatile photographer who took many important photographs, portraits and prize-winning photographs of artistic subjects. His technical expertise was much greater than many other photographers of his time.