The dynamics of isolated-photon plus jet production in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV has been studied with the ATLAS detector at the LHC using an integrated luminosity of 37 pb−137 pb−1. Measurements of isolated-photon plus jet bin-averaged cross sections are presented as functions of photon transverse energy, jet transverse momentum and jet rapidity. In addition, the bin-averaged cross sections as functions of the difference between the azimuthal angles of the photon and the jet, the photon–jet invariant mass and the scattering angle in the photon–jet centre-of-mass frame have been measured. Next-to-leading-order QCD calculations are compared to the measurements and provide a good description of the data, except for the case of the azimuthal opening angle.