 After the divorce of his parents, Jim, his mother, and his two sisters moved to Pennington, New Jersey, where Himes attended and graduated from Hopewell Valley Central High School.Himes attended Harvard University as an undergraduate where he was the captain of the Lightweight crew and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1988.Himes studied for a degree in Latin American studies as a Rhodes scholar at St Edmund Hall, Oxford and graduated with a Master of Philosophy in 1990.