Rowe is a former Birmingham academy coach who was assistant manager at Aldershot until last January.
"We first interviewed James, probably a year ago," said Gloucester vice-chairman Alec Petheram as reported by GloucestershireLive.
"We were keen on James at the time.
"Twelve months have moved on and here we are again, so we eventually got the guy we tried to sign.
"If you look in our league the clubs that are naturally at the top of the pecking order and looking to push for promotion from our league are the ones that have got a different model to us.
"Since I’ve been involved in the club we’ve been looking to go about things a bit differently and be more professional. We see James as the first part of that.
"The key thing for us was someone who’s used to full-time football and gone through the transition of part-time to full-time."