Byrne wrote action and western stories for a range of pulp magazines. His earliest stories were published in 1927 in Fiction House magazines Lariat Story, Air Stories and Action Stories as Jack Byrne. In 1928 he was hired as editor of North-West Stories and edited a wide range of magazines for Fiction House—he was listed as editor in issues of Aces, Action Novels, Action Stories, Black Aces, Fight Stories, Frontier Stories, Lariat Story, Two Complete Detective Books, Two Western Books and Wings.

Throughout his career, he also wrote for other publishers. Argosy Magazine published his story "To Hell with the Devil" on 1 December 1934 and he wrote under his own name and the pen-name Zora Roark for pulp magazines. In 1936, Byrne left Fiction House and became General Editor at Argosy Magazine.

In 1940 Byrne returned to NYC to join Malcolm Reiss as co-publisher of Fiction House. He was managing editor for Fiction House comics from 1945 until 1954, when the company stopped publishing comics. In 1954 Jack Byrne and his family moved to Connecticut.

Byrne's sister Olive married William Moulton Marston, creator of Wonder Woman.