Jim Sterling

"Hello Nate!"

- Sterling's frequent introduction

James "Jim" Sterling (Not that one!) is a character in the television show Leverage. He is a major antagonist through-out the series - having the same training and perspective as Nathan Ford, the leader of the protagonist team.

The series premise is a former IYS insurance agent named Nathan Ford is recruited for a high-stakes theft with several notorious thieves. Though the thieves are experts in their fields, Nate is an expert at countering all of them due to his years of experience as an insurance agent, countering claims and exposing fraud. The man who hires Nate and the team turns on them, but fails to kill them and Nate and the thieves team up to take their revenge and make an obscene amount of money off them. Happy at their success, the thieves press Nate to keep working with them. Nate agrees to continue to help the thieves make the most of their skills with his expertise on the condition he assigns the targets - which due to his moral code, are only cruel, con-artists themselves, too rich and powerful to ever be taken down by the law.

Sterling is the counter-point to Nate - another IYS insurance agent, with few-to-no scruples. Thus, Sterling remains a constant disruption to plans whenever he tracks Nathan and his team down. Sterling is familiar with all the same cons Nate is, which is effectively all of them. Since Sterling is still working for IYS at the start of the series, he is a dark-mirror of what Nate could have been had he not left the company due to it's more negligent practices.

He is played by actor, Mark Shepherd. Actor of (among many others), Crowley from Supernatural.