J T Rutherford (May 30, 1921 – November 6, 2006), was an American lawyer and World War II veteran who served as a Democratic United States Congressional Representative for 4 terms from 1955 to 1963.

He served as an enlisted man in the United States Marine Corps from 1942 to 1946, of which twenty-eight months were spent overseas.

As an assault amphibian vehicle crewman, he landed in the first waves on D-Day at Tarawa, Saipan, where he was wounded, and Tinian.

An unsuccessful candidate for re-election in 1962 to the 88th United States Congress, Rutherford was unseated by Republican Ed Foreman of Odessa, later of Dallas.

[citation needed] He was one of the majority of the Texan delegation to decline to sign the 1956 Southern Manifesto opposing the desegregation of public schools ordered by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education.

He was awarded the U.S. Department of Interior's Conservation Service Award in 1962 for his efforts to spearhead conservation legislation including laws that created a new national seashore on Padre Island, Cape Cod National Seashore, and Point Reyes in California.