John Arthur Godley, 1st Baron Kilbracken, GCB (17 June 1847 – 27 June 1932), was an Anglo-Irish aristocrat and British civil servant and the longest serving, and probably the most influential, Permanent Under-Secretary of State for India.

From April 1850 to December 1852, he was with his parents in New Zealand; his father has become to be regarded as the founder of Canterbury.

[4] He studied at Radley, Rugby, and Balliol College, Oxford (where he won the Gaisford Prize for Greek Verse).

His first important role was acting as Assistant Private Secretary to William Ewart Gladstone, then Prime Minister, during the years 1872 to 1874 and called to Lincoln's Inn bar in 1876.

[1] He was bestowed a GCB in the 1908 Birthday honours list,[5] and on 8 December 1909 he was raised to the peerage as The Baron Kilbracken, of Killegar in the County of Leitrim.