James Cannon Jr. (November 13, 1864 – September 6, 1944) was an American bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, elected in 1918.

His appointment as bishop in 1918 gave him nationwide influence as he worked zealously to achieve national prohibition through the Eighteenth Amendment.

Cannon worked closely with the "Ring," the dominant conservative faction in Virginia politics, headed by Senator Thomas Staples Martin.

Senator Carter Glass became his bitter enemy and started finding irregularities in the bishop's finances, discovering that Cannon, while president of Blackstone College (a small private girls' school in Virginia), had purchased a large quantity of flour in 1917 and, taking advantage of wartime shortages, had resold it not long after at a considerable profit shortly after he became bishop in 1918.

Cannon strongly criticized Smith, calling him "the Cocktail President", who lived in the "sneering, ridiculing, nullifying...foreign-populated city of New York.

However, the new Virginia machine led by Byrd and Glass supported Smith and decided Cannon had to be destroyed for ruining party unity in the Solid South.

Cannon, who had never been a candidate for political office, assumed Hoover's victory in Virginia made the state ripe for himself, and spread rumors he would challenge Glass for the Senate seat.

He supported a coalition of Anti-Smith Democrats and Republicans to win the governorship for Dr. William Moseley Brown of Washington and Lee College.

One Anti-saloon League colleague described him as "cold as a snake"; and another, after working closely with Cannon for forty years, reported having never seen him laugh and rarely seen him even smile.

Although Cannon proclaimed his innocence, the disclosure of the wartime hoarding meant that the charges were mounting faster than his friends could deny them.