jQuery exclude elements with certain class in selector

You can use the .not() method:

$(".content_box a").not(".button")

Alternatively, you can also use the :not() selector:

$(".content_box a:not('.button')")

There is little difference between the two approaches, except .not() is more readable (especially when chained) and :not() is very marginally faster. See this Stack Overflow answer for more info on the differences.