J.D. was born on a significant day, the same day Richard Nixon was elected president, in Greenville, Mississippi, a delta town also known as the birthplace of Muppets creator Jim Henson. He is a descendant of Irish-French-German-Cherokee-Choctaw heritage, the oldest of seven siblings, and attended 17 different schools throughout his childhood, moving frequently between his mother and father's homes.
J.D.'s father, affectionately known as Puddin, is a welder, artist, amateur archaeologist, and inventor, while his mother, Sally, has had various professions, including concert promoter and owner of a country-western nightclub, where J.D. spent many late nights backstage and on stage with notable musicians such as Hank Williams, Jr., Juice Newton, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Paycheck, David Allen Coe, Ray Price, and many others.
After a brief stint in college and a 15-month term in the Marine Corps stationed in California, J.D. decided to pursue acting, despite having minimal experience, aside from a role in a pre-school production of The Nutcracker and getting kicked out of his senior play, Oklahoma, after his second rehearsal. Following his time in the Marine Corps, he returned to Mississippi and worked as a debt collector for his mother's collection agency before realizing it wasn't his calling and returning to college to earn a degree in theatre at The University of Southern Mississippi.
Once on stage, J.D. knew acting was his true passion, and he was selected as one of 20 finalists in the state to attend SETC (Southeastern Theatre Conference). In 1995, a friend offered him a $1,000 to perform a lead role in his play "Dylan's Ghost" at the Morgan-Wixson Theatre in Santa Monica, which he accepted, leaving college a semester before graduating.
Since then, J.D. has lived between Hollywood, California, Austin, Texas, and Oxford, Mississippi, where he wrote and directed his first independent feature, Glorious Mail, in 2005. Despite appearing on the short-lived game show Hollywood Showdown and winning nearly $12,000, his friends jokingly refer to him as almost one lucky son of a gun, due to his near-misses in landing lead roles in major films.
