The adjoint on inner product spaces comes from a more general construction. If $X$ and $Y$ are Banach spaces and $T : X \to Y$ is a bounded linear operator, then $T$ induces a map from the dual of $Y$ to the dual of $X$, that is a $T^*:Y^*\to X^*$ defined by
$T^*y^*(x)=y^*(T(x))\tag 1$
So, if $\mathbb F$ is the scalar field of the spaces $X$ and $Y$, we have that $T^*$ sends an arbitrary $y^*:Y\to \mathbb F$ to a $T^*y^*:X\to \mathbb F$, which acts on an arbitrary $x\in X$ as in $(1).$
The reason this definition is useful is that knowledge of the properties of the dual space often provides answers to questions about the space itself.
Of course, one has to check that $T^*y^*$ is a bounded linear operator. Linearity is immediate, and boundedness follows from the calculation
$|y^*(T(x))| \leq \| y^* \| \| T \| \| x \| \tag2$
To specialize this to your case, suppose $X=Y=V$ an inner product space and $T:V\to V$ is a bounded linear operator. By the Riesz theorem, there is a bijection
$v\leftrightarrow \langle \cdot,v\rangle\ \text{between the elements of}\ V\ \text{and those of}\ V^*\tag 3$
Let $y,w\in V$ be the elements corresponding to $y^*$ and $T^*y^*$, respectively. Then, $\langle T(v),y\rangle=\langle v,w\rangle$. But, $T^*$ sends $y^*$ to $T^*y^*$ so applying the correspondence $(3)$, we have $T^*y=w$, from which it follows that
$\langle T(v),y\rangle=\langle v,T^*y\rangle \tag4$