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The devils don't have 'faith' my man. Faith is not 'belief in the mere fact of God's existence'. Which is James' whole point! His letter was to a specific congregation warning them against claiming to have faith but not actually following Jesus' commands. Your comment about the devils is actually pretty revealing, it indicates that you're working under or at least influenced by this false conception of faith == propositional belief.
I'm actually pretty well convinced that the Protestant 'sola fide' and the Catholic 'works + faith' are actually the same when properly understood - Catholics will be quick to clarify that although you 'need works' you also don't strictly need works for grace/salvation (as you yourself admitted), and Protestants obviously don't deny the letter of James. If James actually clearly refuted a proper understanding of sola fide I'm pretty sure someone would have noticed. Rather, I think the two conceptions are two sides of the same coin, which just have biases that cause them to fail in opposite directions. A Protestant could take sola fide to the extreme by saying 'I'm saved so I don't need to worry about my actions' which I guess you sort of see from certain casual Christian types (although I think it's pretty rare for a Protestant to think they don't need to do good deeds). Meanwhile many Catholics take works to the extreme by saying 'I'm a good person and I go to church so I'm going to heaven' while completely missing having any relationship with God. Protestants arrived at sola fide as a reaction to ritualism and legalism in the medieval church, i.e. the failure mode of the Catholic conception, but nowadays sola fide also has some pretty blatant failure modes. The gate is narrow that leads to eternal life.
On your last question I have no idea what you're asking. The apostles have more authority because Jesus gave them more authority. Not sure what that has to do with the priesthood of all believers, whatever you meant by that.
Anyway, God Bless and I hope you find this explanation useful!
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