Howard James Hubbard (October 31, 1938 – August 19, 2023) was an American Catholic prelate who served as Bishop of Albany from 1977 to 2014.

[12] Hubbard was appointed by Pope John Paul II to the Vatican's Secretariat for Non-Christians (later known as the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue).

[13][14] He was known for progressive views on drug addiction and the prison population, and for advocacy of sometimes unpopular social justice issues.

[9] In 1992, he began living "in almost monastic simplicity in a nondescript, squat brick building" across the street from the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

[9] Hubbard once sued to prevent clinics providing abortion services to women from opening in Albany and Hudson, New York.

[19] On August 14, 2019, a man filed a civil lawsuit accusing Hubbard of sexually abusing the plaintiff when he was a teenage boy in the 1990s.

[22] On September 16, 2019, an unnamed woman alleged that Hubbard and two other priests sexually abused her in the rectory of Immaculate Conception Church in Schenectady in the late 1970s when she was a teenager.

[23] On August 12, 2020, a South Carolina resident accused Hubbard of child sex abuse in a lawsuit filed with the New York Supreme Court.

[24] The plaintiff alleged that Hubbard sexually abused him when he was ten years old on a 1975 field trip to West Point.

[25] On March 19, 2011, Hubbard placed three retired priests on administrative leave and removed another from the ministry after receiving allegations of child sexual abuse.

[9] In a July 2021 interview with the Albany Times Union, Hubbard admitted that the diocese used to send priests accused of sexually abusing minor away for treatment without notifying the police.

[30] On February 11, 2014, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had accepted Hubbard's resignation and appointed Bishop Edward Scharfenberger as his successor.

[34] In November 2022, Hubbard petitioned the Holy See to remove him from the clerical state, explaining that he was already unable to function as a priest due to the diocese's policy of barring any clergy with active investigations from public ministry.

Bishop Scharfenberger stated that the Catholic Church did not recognize the marriage because the Vatican had not granted Hubbard's request for laicization.