James Lindsay Almond Jr. (June 15, 1898 – April 14, 1986) was an American lawyer, state and federal judge and Democratic party politician.

As a member of the Byrd Organization, Almond initially supported massive resistance to the integration of public schools following the United States Supreme Court decisions in Brown v. Board of Education, but when Virginia and federal courts ruled segregation unconstitutional, Almond worked with the legislature to end massive resistance.

In possibly his most famous case, discussed at length in the book Truevine, Judge Almond appointed what would today be called a guardian or conservator for two albino African-American men who had been abducted as children from their family's farm near Roanoke, and who toured as a sideshow attraction with the Ringling Brothers Circus for several years while only an unrelated White man received wages for them.

Later, they wished to return to the circus rather than stay unemployed at home, so at their and their lawyer's request, Judge Almond arranged for part of their salaries to be saved to support their retirement (four years before adoption of the Social Security Act), as well as to support their again-widowed mother, and enforced a similar arrangement when their manager took them touring with other circuses.

By 1956, Byrd had announced the organization's policy of massive resistance, and as attorney-general, Almond had defended what became known as the Stanley Plan despite doubts about its constitutionality.

In 1957, Almond resigned as attorney general (and Stanley appointed Kenneth Cartwright Patty to fill the rest of the term) and announced early for the Democratic nomination for governor.

His Republican opponent, Theodore Roosevelt Dalton, would have allowed racial integration of the public schools pursuant to court orders.

Almond initially protested denouncing the federal court rulings in a fiery speech blasting "those whose purpose and design is to blend and amalgamate of the white and negro races" and citing "the livid stench of sadism, sex immorality, and juvenile pregnancy infesting the mixed schools of the District of Columbia and elsewhere," but he soon called a special legislative session and announced (to the fury of Byrd, James J. Kilpatrick, and others) that he would not resist the federal court orders.

[6] Heeding the advice of several moderates within his own party, including Senator Mosby Perrow Jr., Almond realized that opposition to desegregation was ultimately futile, as the state continued to lose in the courts.

In April 1959, Almond and his lieutenant governor, Allie Edward Stakes Stephens, helped Perrow and Stuart B. Carter of Fincastle, Virginia narrowly secure passage of bills which allowed localities to determine whether to desegregate their schools.

Stephens lost badly in the 1961 Democratic primary (which ended his elected career), and Byrd loyalist Mills Godwin defeated moderate Armistead Boothe for lieutenant governor, but the machine's vote totals were lower than previously.