J. David Simons is a Scottish novelist and short story writer. He was born on 27 August 1953. Simons was educated at Hutchesons' Boys Grammar School and graduated with a law degree from Glasgow University in 1973. Over his varied career, he has worked as a partner with an Edinburgh law firm, a cotton farmer on Kibbutz Ashdot Ya'akov Ichud in Israel, a charity administrator for the Cyrenians in West London, a university lecturer at Keio University, Japan, and a journalist for the multi-national publishing house Informa.

Besides his fiction writing, Simons is an editor with the Blue Pencil literary agency and a media journalist with the global technology consultancy firm, Omdia (formerly Ovum). Since October 2017, he has embraced the life of a digital nomad – traveling, writing, and working around the world. As of recent information, he resides in Javea, Spain.

Simons' novels include The Credit Draper (2008), The Liberation of Celia Kahn (2011), An Exquisite Sense of What is Beautiful (2013), The Land Agent (2014), and A Woman of Integrity (2017), all published by Saraband. His latest novel, The Responsibility of Love, was released as an ebook and special limited edition in May 2021 and was published commercially by BackPage Press in Autumn 2021.

He has received several grants from Creative Scotland and the Society of Authors, has been shortlisted for the McKitterick Prize, and was awarded a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship in 2012.