Wolff (James Harris) is born in Border Springs, Mississippi.

The son of Abraham and Eliza Wolff, he grows up in New Hampshire, serves in the U.S. Navy during the Civil War, and attends the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts. He arrives in Boston in approximately 1870, studies law, attends Harvard Law School, and is admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1875. Wolff becomes the first African American to practice in the U.S. Circuit Court in Maryland, returns to Boston in 1878, marries Mercy Anna Birmingham in 1880, and moves to 6 Adams Street, and opens a law firm in in 1886.* He dies in Boston on May 3, 1913, and is buried at Ridgelawn Cemetery in Watertown.