I found this while searching for a solution to stop the volume buttons from turning on the screen and I thought I'd share:
Disable Volume Wake Galaxy Nexus 4.0.4 Leaked ROM - xda-developers
Confirmed it works. Don't delete WAKE from your power button!
Disable Volume Wake Galaxy Nexus 4.0.4 Leaked ROM - xda-developers
Navigate to /system/usr/keylayout/ with Root Explorer or such and mount as read/write.
Make a backup of tuna-gpio-keypad.kl -- just in case
Then open tuna-gpio-keypad.kl in a text editor.
You will see 3 values after all of the header text information:
key 114 VOLUME_DOWN WAKE
key 115 VOLUME_UP WAKE
key 116 POWER WAKE
Delete the "WAKE" from the buttons you wish NOT to have wake the phone.
Save the file and restart.
Confirmed it works. Don't delete WAKE from your power button!