James L. Buckley turns 100 Thursday. America’s oldest living former senator and older brother of the late William F. Buckley Jr., Jim Buckley achieved the first third-party victory to the Senate in 40 years when he won in 1970 as the candidate of the Conservative Party in New York. A veteran of World War II, a corporate lawyer, father and husband, Jim Buckley served in all three branches of the federal government as undersecretary of state in the Reagan administration and later as president of Radio Free Europe.