Jeffrey Lawrence Williams was born on July 6, 1950, in Mount Vernon, Ohio, and grew up in Oberlin. Self-taught, he began on drums as a young child with his parents' jazz records as his guide, and by fourteen he was playing gigs with local professionals. His mother, the singer Ann Williams, moved to New York to pursue a jazz career when he was nine, and through her he met drummers who became early mentors: Jo Jones, Herb Lovelle, Oliver Jackson and Elvin Jones. His recording debut came with the Oberlin psychedelic rock band Ant Trip Ceremony, whose album 24 Hours appeared in 1968. That year he entered Berklee, where he studied arranging and composition and took drum lessons from Alan Dawson, a teacher he returned to again in the early 1980s.

Williams moved to New York in 1971 and soon fell in with saxophonist Dave Liebman and pianist Richie Beirach. He first played with Lee Konitz in 1972, the start of an association that continued for decades, and in late 1972 he joined Stan Getz's group, which over his stay of about two years included bassist Dave Holland and pianists Hal Galper, Beirach and Albert Dailey. In December 1972 he also recorded the quartet album Friends for the small Oblivion label with Marc Cohen (later Marc Copland), guitarist John Abercrombie and bassist Clint Houston. Liebman's band Lookout Farm, with Beirach, bassist Frank Tusa and later tabla player Badal Roy, recorded its ECM debut over two days in October 1973 and toured Europe, Asia and the United States until it disbanded in 1976. Williams also played on Beirach's trio records Eon (ECM) and Methuselah and on Liebman's Drum Ode and Sweet Hands. For the rest of the 1970s he freelanced in New York with Joe Farrell, Frank Foster, Nick Brignola, Billy Mitchell and George Coleman, played in bands led by Arnie Lawrence (Treasure Island), Ted Curson, Richard Sussman and Albert Dailey, and led a group that included John Scofield.

After a year away in Maine he settled in Boston in 1981, studying again with Dawson and helping to form a jazz series at Harvard's Hasty Pudding Club, where he accompanied Cedar Walton, Konitz, Milt Hinton and Miroslav Vitous, among others. From 1983 to 1986 he recorded and toured with saxophonist Jerry Bergonzi's quartet Con Brio. Back in New York in the mid-1980s he formed the trio Interplay with pianist Peter Madsen and bassist Anthony Cox, a group that mixed free improvisation with originals and standards and that performed with Getz in 1987. He spent most of 1988 touring with Getz again, with the Interplay rhythm section and later Kenny Barron in place of Madsen, toured Japan with pianist Sakurako Ogyu and Marc Johnson, and worked with Michel Petrucciani, Art Farmer and Clifford Jordan, and the quartet of Cecil McBee. In 1990 he started a jazz policy at the Manhattan bar Bar Room 432, where he led a trio with guitarist Ben Monder and bassist Scott Colley and played with Liebman and Joe Lovano. A cassette of a duo night with Liebman there in 1991 was forgotten for decades and was released in 2024 as In Duo.

Williams began writing for his own bands in the mid-1980s. A quartet session in 1989 with Patrick Zimmerli, Kevin Hays and Scott Colley stayed unreleased; enlarged to a quintet in 1991 with saxophonist Tim Ries and bassist Doug Weiss, the group recorded Coalescence for SteepleChase on May 20 and 21, 1991, and made Jazzblues on August 29, 1995, issued by Cathexis in 1999. Through the 1990s he also toured Europe with Lovano, trumpeter Tom Harrell and Cox, played in Lovano's Universal Language ensemble, and in 1998 formed Circadian Rhythms, a trio with saxophonist Tony Malaby and bassist Michael Formanek. Live at Smalls (Fresh Sound New Talent, 2000), a quartet date with Ethan Iverson, Bill McHenry and Reid Anderson, came out in the same period, and he toured Europe with Paul Bley in 2001.

From the mid-2000s Williams divided his time between New York and London. Working there, he toured the United Kingdom with McHenry (2005), Konitz (2006) and a Liebman quartet co-led by guitarist Phil Robson (2008), played with saxophonist Martin Speake and pianist Bobo Stenson, and appeared with pianist Nikki Iles and in Hans Koller's ensemble alongside Kenny Wheeler and Norma Winstone. He began releasing his own music on Whirlwind Recordings with Another Time in October 2011, a quartet record made with trumpeter Duane Eubanks, alto saxophonist John O'Gallagher and bassist John Hébert in Brooklyn in September 2010. The Listener (2013) captured the same group live at London's Vortex Jazz Club in May 2012, and a UK band with Robson, pianist Kit Downes, tenor saxophonist Josh Arcoleo and bassist Sam Lasserson made Outlier (2016). Lifelike (2018) added trumpeter Gonçalo Marques, Bloom (2019) was a trio date with pianist Carmen Staaf and Formanek recorded on August 17, 2018, and Road Tales (2020) documented his London quartet at the 2018 London Jazz Festival. In Duo with Liebman, released in 2024, was his seventh album for the label.

Williams has taught at the Royal Academy of Music in London and at Birmingham Conservatoire, where a 2017 review described him as a drum tutor and group leader on the jazz course, and has given masterclasses at the New School, Long Island University, the University of Connecticut and Maine Jazz Camp. He has been married to the novelist Lionel Shriver since 2003. His own website now says he has relocated from London to Lisbon, where he plays with Marques and in the trio Panoply with O'Gallagher and Formanek, and he continued to work in New York in 2026, including the first night of a Saturday trio residency at Barbès in August 2026 with saxophonist Michaël Attias and bassist Mark Helias.

Williams came up through the school of Jo Jones, Elvin Jones and Oliver Jackson and studied for years with Alan Dawson, the Boston teacher whose method shaped a generation of drummers. Peter Madsen, who played with him in Interplay, describes him as a drummer who surrounds a soloist with sound and rhythm so that whatever is played seems to fit, who can handle very complex ideas without making the band feel pushed, and who listens closely. Reviewers of his live and duo work note a player who is rarely the loudest in the room but who can move into dense, multi-directional playing in free settings. That range is audible across his career, from the electric and acoustic mix of Lookout Farm and the open trio improvisation of Interplay to the post-bop of his own quintets and quartets and the fully improvised duo with Dave Liebman. As a composer he writes bop-informed originals that recur across albums in different lineups, such as "She Can't Be a Spy," "Double Life" and "Under the Radar," and he has often chosen younger improvisers as bandmates, first in New York and later in London.