nope, when you do a bind to a skeleton you need to select ALL the joints that will affect the mesh.

I think you'd normally name the leaf bones (the ones with no children) be_l_blahBlah01 or something and the bones that do stuff bn_l_blahBlah01 (assuming you're doing the left side) so you can select all bn_* objects in the selector box at the top to select all the ones that will directly affect the mesh.
if that makes sense to you...