David Ker (February 1758 – January 21, 1805), was an Irish-born American Presbyterian minister, educator, lawyer and judge.

[5] Ker emigrated with his family to the United States in the 1780s and was recorded in Orange County, North Carolina, by 1789, when their son was born there.

[1] Kemp P. Battle's History of the University of North Carolina: From its Beginning to the Death of President Swain, 1789–1868 mentions that after eighteen months of being president, Ker resigned after he "went off into infidelity and wild democracy", and made "two sets of enemies in the Board of Trustees, Christians and Federalists".

[9] Charles Wilson Harris, who succeeded him as presiding professor, said that Ker was "a man of talent" and "a furious Republican".

He served as the first president of an academy founded by John Willis, a Brigadier General in the American Revolutionary War who owned a large plantation in Lumberton, in the 1790s.

Ker's portrait is preserved at the Southern Historical Collection of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.