James Alton James (September 17, 1864 – February 12, 1962) was an American educator and historian.

James was born on September 17, 1864, in Jefferson, Wisconsin. He spent two years at the Platteville Normal School, and then, after teaching high school for two years to pay for the university, entered the University of Wisconsin, where he graduated as valedictorian with an LL.B. in 1888. He received a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1893.^{[citation needed]}

He was superintendent of schools in Darlington, Wisconsin, 1888–90; professor of history at Cornell College, Iowa, 1893–97. He became a professor of history at Northwestern University in 1897, becoming professor emeritus in 1935. He was head of the history department for over two decades and was also the chairman of the graduate student work at the university from 1917 to 1931. He was a member of several educational and historical societies. James died on February 12, 1962, in Evanston, Illinois.^{[citation needed]}

• Government in State and Nation, with Allen Hart Stanford (1901)
• Our Government (1903)
• American History (1909)
• Readings in American History (1914)
• Charles Seignobos, History of Contemporary Civilization, editor (1909)
• George Rogers Clark Papers, editor (Illinois State Historical Society, 1912)
• Oliver Pollock, The Life and Times of an Unknown Patriot (1937)