Aylett Rains Cotton (November 29, 1826 – October 30, 1912) was an American politician, lawyer, judge, educator and miner active in Iowa and Northern California.

He attended Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, in 1845 and taught school at Union Academy in Fayette County, Tennessee, from 1845 to 1847.

Cotton moved to California in 1849 and engaged in mining on the Feather River in the Sacramento Valley.

He was prosecuting attorney of Clinton County in 1854, mayor of Lyons from 1855 to 1857 and was a member of the Iowa constitutional convention in 1857.

[2] Although his official Congressional biography states that he declined to run for a third term in 1874, newspaper reports indicate that he was an active but unsuccessful candidate for renomination at the Republican district convention in DeWitt, Iowa, on September 1, 1874, losing to John Q. Tufts on the 30th ballot.