Johnson was born in Waxahachie, Texas and he graduated from the University of Oklahoma's law department, class of 1915 with postgraduate work at l’Université de Clermont at Clermont-Ferrand, France. He was admitted to the bar in 1918 and began practicing law in Walters, Oklahoma. Johnson served overseas as a private in World War I in Company L of the Thirty-sixth Division in 1918 and 1919. He edited a newspaper in Cotton County, Oklahoma, from 1920 to 1922. He was first elected to public office to the Oklahoma State Senate in 1920 as a Democrat and served until 1926, when he was elected to the House of Representatives. He served as a delegate to the annual peace conference of the Interparliamentary Union at Paris, France, in 1927 and 1937, and at Geneva, Switzerland, in 1929, and was chairman of the speakers’ bureau for the Democratic National Congressional Committee. He served 20 years in Congress until losing the Democratic primary election in 1946. He was appointed to the United States Customs Court by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945, and declined it, but accepted an appointment from President Harry S Truman to serve as a judge on the United States Customs Court from 1947 until his death in a New York City hospital on May 8, 1963. Johnson was burried at Rose Hill Cemetery in Chickasha, Oklahoma.

His son Jed Johnson, Jr. served one term in Congress.