King James did not remove the “apocryphal” books; they were placed in between the Old and New Testaments in the original version of the translation that bears his name. These books were eliminated in later printings because of the objections of some Protestants.
The history of the development of the Old Testament canon is not entirely certain. It is clear, however, that after Judaism and Christianity separated the development of their respective Old Testament canons took different courses. There was still some debate among the Jews as to what should be included in their canon as late as 200 A.D., so it would not be accurate to suggest that the current Jewish canon was fixed before the time of Christ, only to be added to later by some hypothetical corrupted Church.
What eventually became a criterion for inclusion in the Jewish Canon was that the book in question be extant in the Hebrew language. There were some books that were not included because, although they might have originally been written in Hebrew, they had become available only in the Greek language and were part of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament (most of the Old Testament quotes in the New Testament are from the Septuagint). The Jews had come to distrust the Septuagint because it was the Old Testament used by the Christians, although the Septuagint was a translation made by Jews that was completed before the time of Christ. Obviously, neither the Hebrew language requirement nor the distrust of the Septuagint were issues for the Christians, and so the Church continued to consider those books that were in the Septuagint, but not written or extant in Hebrew, as Scripture. After the Protestant Reformation, the Protestants, for whatever reason, began to hold to the Jewish canon rather than the traditional Christian one.
It is noteworthy that every Christian tradition that is older than Protestantism holds to an Old Testament canon that is larger than the Jewish canon. There are, it should be pointed out, variations among those traditions. For example, the Orthodox Old Testament canon contains some books that are not in the Catholic canon. Moreover, there were some early Christian voices for the Jewish canon: Jerome, for example. But no Christian tradition as a body held to the Jewish canon until the rise of Protestantism.
This subject could take up a whole book, so what I’ve written here is abbreviated and incomplete. But it is clear that your friend has been grievously misinformed about the history of the development of the Old Testament canon. This is what happens when the interests of polemics override those of truth-seeking.
