James Brochin (born February 22, 1964) is an American politician who was a member of the Maryland Senate representing the 42nd district in Baltimore County from 2003 to 2019.

He unsuccessfully ran for Baltimore County Executive in 2018, placing second behind former state delegate Johnny Olszewski in the Democratic primary by a margin of 17 votes.

[2] After graduating from Pikesville High School, he attended the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1986.

That year, he claimed that Governor Martin O'Malley and Democratic leaders of the Maryland General Assembly had redrawn his district with the hopes that he would lose his re-election bid to a Republican, citing his vote for a bill introduced by former Republican Governor Bob Ehrlich to give the state control of Baltimore City schools.

During the Democratic primary, he campaigned for increased funding for college and career readiness programs in schools, more treatment options for heroin addicts, and against what he called "development interests" in Baltimore County, prioritizing land preservation, smart redevelopment, and ethics reforms.

[28] In April 2012, Brochin said that he would support reforms providing violent youth offenders with intensive counseling and therapy to deter juvenile crimes in Maryland, citing their success in Texas and Missouri.

[30] In March 2016, Brochin voted for legislation that would redirect low-level drug offenders into treatment instead of prison, expand record expurgations for certain convictions, and reduce sentences for parole violators.

[31] Brochin supports the death penalty[32] and opposed Governor Martin O'Malley's bill to repeal it, worrying that prosecutors would lose a valuable "bargaining chip" when negotiating plea deals.

[38] In August 2011, Brochin suggested implementing a surcharge on eviction notices to help the Baltimore Housing Authority pay nearly $12 million in court-ordered judgments owed to former tenants.

[40] During his 2018 county executive campaign, he rallied against proposed developments in Towson, including the Towson Row project and apartments near Lake Roland Park,[41] and said that he opposed the HOME Act, which prohibits landlords from discriminating against potential tenants based on their source of income, saying instead that he would support legislation requiring developers to set aside a certain percentage of housing units for low or moderate income families.

[43] During the 2011 legislative session, Brochin was one of a few Democrats to vote against the Maryland Dream Act, which extended in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants.

[48][49] From 2002 to 2012, Brochin accepted nearly $13,000 in campaign contributions from gun lobby organizations, including more than $2,000 from the National Rifle Association of America (NRA).

[51] During the 2009 legislative session, Brochin supported a bill that gave judges the authority to seize guns from people with protective orders.

In 2013, following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, he voted for the Firearms Safety Act, which banned assault weapons in Maryland.

[55] In July 2021, he co-founded Fair Maps Maryland, an anti-gerrymandering lobbying group, alongside former Republican Howard County Executive Allan Kittleman.

[63] During the 2014 legislative session, Brochin voted against a bill to ban discrimination against transgender people, citing a hypothetical example of a trans woman waiting in the women's restroom to attack.