Dallas Selwyn Townsend Sr. (August 2, 1888 – May 27, 1966) was an American Republican Party official who served as the Assistant United States Attorney General during the Eisenhower administration.

He remained in Hungary for eighteen months after the war to serve as the deputy commander of the American Military Mission, which was part of the Allied Control Commission.

Republicans had held the seat from 1914 until 1936, when Democrat Frank W. Towey Jr. won it on the coattails of President Franklin Roosevelt's re-election.

His main rival was investment banker Robert Kean, the son of a former United States Senator and the scion of one of America's oldest political families.

[9] President Dwight Eisenhower appointed Townsend to serve as an Assistant United States Attorney General in 1953, heading the Justice Department's Alien Property Office.

"One of the most unfair aspects of the a general return of all German and Japanese property is that it would donate huge windfalls to large enemy corporations, industrialists and their agents, many of whom were strong supporters of the militaristic and aggressive policies of the former Governments of Germany and Japan," he told Senators.