Benjamin B. Cunningham (1874 – January 2, 1946),[1] was a long-serving New York state court judge who "in a 47-year public career initiated, fought for or passed upon legal questions of lasting importance to official Rochester".

He was elected Corporation Counsel in 1915, holding office from 1916 to the close of 1919, during which period he put in a year as President of the Rochester Bar Association.

In his capacity as Corporation Counsel, he was the draftsman of a new City Charter, engaged in lengthy litigation to protect the city's water supply in Hemlock, and had repeated confrontations in court with local monopolies and the State Public Service Commission over fares and practices.

[2] Shortly after he assumed office on the court on January 1, 1920, he fell ill, and was deemed unlikely to survive, but he spent four months in a homeopathic hospital, and then went resort in the South to recover, and was well enough to return to work in the fall of that year.

[3] He stood as a Republican candidate for the State Court of Appeals in 1940, a failing enterprise due to the continued popularity of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democratic Party in that year.