James Street and the firm was described in the 1840s as the most influential in Montreal, having brought together the largest legal business by any one firm in the Province of Quebec. In 1843, he commissioned John Wells, to build him a home beyond the walls of Old Montreal on a spacious plot of land surrounded by fields, Elm and Maple trees. It still stands today, known as the Notman House. In 1844, he was created a Queen's Counsel (Q.C.), declining the office of Solicitor General, and subsequently that of Attorney-General, which he declined again for the second time in 1847 during the Draper administration. Meredith disliked politics. In the same year Chief Justice Joseph-Rémi Vallières de Saint-Réal offered him the position of Dean of Law at McGill University, which he also turned down - a position his grandson, William Campbell James Meredith, later held. He was one of the founding members and a director of the High School of Montreal, which was established with his help in 1843 and soon superseded the Royal Grammar School. He was counsel to the board of the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning and on the committee to save McGill University in the early 1840s. He conducted a good deal of business for the university, and it was with his influence that his younger brother, Edmund Allen Meredith, became the sixth principal of McGill from 1846 to 1853. In 1848, he was a founding director and trustee of the Montreal Mining Company along with Peter McGill, George Moffatt, Sir George Simpson, Sir Allan Napier MacNab and James Ferrier. Quebec In December 1849, Meredith was appointed to be one of the first ten judges of the newly established Superior Court for the Province of Quebec, by the Lafontaine–Baldwin government, a position he held for ten years. However, this meant abandoning with some reluctance the practice of a profession to which he was greatly attached, and in doing so relinquished a profitable business in Montreal. During Lord Elgin's term as Governor General of Canada (1847–1854), Meredith was elected one of the judges of the Seigneurial Court. In 1859, 'at the earnest solicitation of the government and in compliance with the members of the Montreal bar', he accepted a seat from Sir George-Étienne Cartier, as a judge in the Court of Queen's Bench, that being the Court of Appeals for the province. Several of his