Sir George Jessel, PC, FRS (13 February 1824 – 21 March 1883) was a British barrister, politician, and judge.

He entered Lincoln's Inn as a student in 1842, and a year later took his BA at the University of London, becoming MA and gold medallist in mathematics and natural philosophy in 1844.

He read in the chambers of the conveyancer Peter Bellinger Brodie, and was the pupil of Edward John Lloyd and of Barnes Peacock.

By degrees, however, he got more work, and was appointed Queen's Counsel in 1865, becoming a bencher of his Inn in the same year and practising in the Court of Chancery.

Jessel entered Parliament as Liberal Party member for Dover in 1868, and although neither his intellect nor his oratory was of a class likely to commend itself to his fellow-members, he attracted William Ewart Gladstone's attention by two learned speeches on the Bankruptcy Bill which was before the house in 1869, with the result that, in 1871, he was appointed Solicitor General.

[2] As a judge of first instance Jessel was a revelation to those accustomed to the proverbial slowness of the chancery courts and of the Master of the Rolls who preceded him.

His knowledge of law and equity was wide and accurate, and his memory for cases and command of the principles laid down in them extraordinary.

[2] The second of these two occasions was the case of Robarts v The Corporation of London (49 Law Times 455; The Times, 10 March 1883), and those who may read Jessel's judgment should remember that, reviewing as it does the law and custom on the subject, and the records of the city with regard to the appointment of a remembrancer from the 16th century, together with the facts of the case before the court, it occupied nearly an hour to deliver, but was nevertheless delivered without notes this, too, on 9 March 1883, when the judge who uttered it was within a fortnight of his death.

[2] Jessel sat on the royal commission for the amendment of the Medical Acts, taking an active part in the preparation of its report.

[2] Jessel's career marks an epoch on the bench, owing to the active part taken by him in rendering the Judicature Acts effective, and also because he was the last judge capable of sitting in the House of Commons, a privilege of which he did not avail himself.