Jiri T. Payne was born on July 7, 1956 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. His father, Harry Donald Payne, gave up his American citizenship in the fifties because of his marriage to a Czech woman.To keep both citizenschip was not alowed by law.

After completing elementary and grammar school (Gymnasium Botičská - Prague) Jiri studied nuclear physics in Prague at Charles University's the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics. After finishing his studies (1981) and passing the leaving examinations he was not permitted to work as a scientist because of his religious beliefs and political activities (he did not officially graduate before the 1989 velvet revolution).

He therefore started to work in 1981 as a systems programmer and a computer and programming lecturer. Because of further prosecution he was employed from 1984 to 1986 as an orderly at an old people's home and later from 1986 as a boilerman.

For several years, he took part in theological and philosophical seminars at so called "Patočka University" (unofficial lectures by philosophy professors banned by the communist authorities), which had to operate in secret.

In 1988, during anticommunist demonstrations, he was harassed by the communist police and prosecuted for one year until 1989. During that time he worked with VONS, a human rights initiative.

In the first free parliamentary elections in June 1990, he was elected to the Czech National Council as a member for the Civic Forum (the political movement founded by Václav Havel). He was elected a vice-chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and at the same time he was a member of the Committee for Social Policy and Health Care. He also worked as a member of the Parliamentary Commission for Drafting the Constitution. He is one of the founders of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) (a conservative-liberal party, a member of EDU, a successor to the Civic Forum, led by Václav Klaus, the present Czech premier).

In the election of June 1992, he was re-elected an M.P. as a member for the Civic Democratic Party. As a member of a government coalition party, he was elected the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

He was also a member of the Parliamentary Commission for Drafting the Czech Constitution, passed in 1992.

In February 1993, he was officially invited to the United States to participate for four weeks in the program of studies organised by the USIA entitled "Foreign Policy Challenges Facing the U.S. and Europe".

He was the Head of the Czech Standing Delegation for cooperation with the European Parliament, as well as a member of the Standing Delegation to the CSCE Parliamentary Assembly. At the CSCE Parliamentary Assembly meeting in Helsinki (July 1993) he was elected a rapporteur of the Committee on Political Affairs and Security.

In the election in June 1996, he was re-elected an M.P. as a member for the Civic Democratic Party. From October 1996 to May 1997 he was a Deputy Defense Minister. After the 1998 election he was re-elected the Vice-chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and Chairman of the Standing Delegation to the North Atlantic Assembly.

In 2004 he was invited to work as foreign affairs and political advisor to the Czech president Vaclav Klaus.

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