James Bailey

James Bailey is the Acting Procurement Officer of NASA Shared Services Center (NSSC) and Stennis Space Center (SSC) located in Hancock County, Mississippi. In this role, Mr. Bailey’s primary duties include managing a workforce of over 40 Civil Servants and an acquisition portfolio encompassing over 17K contract actions with obligations more than $1.6 billion annually in support of numerous missions across 10 NASA Centers. Previously, he served as the Deputy Procurement Officer of NSSC and Stennis.

Mr. Bailey began his career at NASA at Marshall Space Flight Center as a co-op student while attending Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University. After graduation, he accepted a permanent position and has worked to build his brand as a problem solver, a consummate professional and leader who gets the job done. Since then, he has held leadership roles at five (5) NASA Installations, including Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where he led the Center’s Institutional contracts division and Engineering contracts divisions, at NASA-Headquarters in Washington, D.C., where he led the award of the first suite of contract awards to support the Nations Vision for Space Exploration under the Space Exploration Concept Exploration and Refinement Broad Agency Announcement, at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas he held the procurement lead role for the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS), and most recently in Information Technology Procurement Office-Virtual Office he leads the agency’s Enterprise IT Contracts portfolio.

Throughout his career, he has contributed to the agency’s success through his numerous efforts, such as leading the transition of an agency decentralized acquisition approach to a centralized Enterprise construct for information technology support. Mr. Bailey has also spearheaded and managed the effort to transition the Simplified Acquisition Threshold (SAT) function from Marshall to NSSC under a strategic sourcing initiative to provide efficient and effective management of SAT services under the new Enterprise Operating Model. He has also been staunch supporter of the agency and Office of Procurement’s current transformation product service line (PSL) initiative, where previous Institutional contracts portfolio of contracts included 17 of the 24 PSLs.

Other notable accomplishments of Mr. Bailey include awarding the Funded Space Act Agreements leading to creation of the United States commercial space sector, managing geographically dispersed workforce with an annual spend of over $500M, and coordinating staff activities for the de-contamination and environmental remediation of Santa Susana Field Laboratory test area in Southern California. 

Mr. Bailey holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University in Normal, Alabama. He also earned a Master of Business Administration from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Recognized for his exceptional contributions and exemplary team leadership, he has been awarded with numerous prestigious honors. His accolades include being the recipient of the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Center Director Commendation, MSFC Office of Safety and Mission Assurance Incident Injury Free Medal, and numerous group achievement and other awards.

Lastly, Mr. Bailey is the proud father to one daughter, Jamie Bailey, who is a very talented hair stylist and entrepreneur in Birmingham, AL.