James Howard Marshall II (January 24, 1905 – August 4, 1995) was an American businessman, government official, lawyer, and legal scholar.

He owned 16 percent of Koch Industries and was married to American model Anna Nicole Smith during the last 14 months of his life.

Born in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, and raised a Quaker,[1] J. Howard Marshall II attended George School, a private high school in Newtown, Pennsylvania, and then studied liberal arts at Haverford College, both Quaker institutions, graduating in 1926.

He worked with future Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas on an article titled A Factual Study of Bankruptcy Administration and Some Suggestions, published in 1932.

[4] These studies offered an alternative to the then-prevailing practices of controlled production in the petroleum industry, which were leading to dramatic boom-bust cycles.

In 1933, Marshall left Yale to become the Assistant Solicitor at the Department of the Interior under Harold L. Ickes.

[6] In 1935, he left government service to become the special counsel to Kenneth R. Kingsbury, the president of Standard Oil of California (now Chevron Corporation) in San Francisco.

[7] In 1984, he formed Marshall Petroleum, which was primarily a holding company for his interest in Koch Industries.

Union Oil acquired a majority interest in Great Northern and attempted to take over the company, but Marshall and Koch, who wanted to keep their assets in private hands, blocked the takeover.

In 1982, he met "Lady" Diane Walker at a strip club and offered to marry her if his wife Betty, who had Alzheimer's disease, were to die.

[11] During the probate proceedings, Smith declared bankruptcy in California and was awarded $474 million as a sanction for E. Pierce Marshall’s alleged misconduct in discovery.

[12] In 2002, the bankruptcy judgment was vacated and Smith’s award was reduced to $88 million in a United States district court in California.

[15][16] On June 25, 2009, the same three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard oral arguments on the remaining appellate issues.