James Davis Porter (December 7, 1828 – May 18, 1912) was an American attorney, politician, educator, and officer of the Confederate Army.

He served during much of the war as chief of staff to Confederate General Benjamin F. Cheatham, and saw action at various battles in Tennessee and Georgia.

[1] Porter spent his later years as chancellor of his alma mater, the University of Nashville, and as president of Peabody College.

[3] He studied law at Cumberland University and in Paris under local attorney John H. Dunlap; he was admitted to the bar in 1851.

[4][5] That year he also married Susannah Dunlap, his mentor's daughter, starting his career and adult life.

[3] In early May 1861, following the Battle of Fort Sumter, these measures were enacted, and Tennessee signed a military pact with the Confederacy.

Porter was commissioned as an adjutant general under Gideon J. Pillow, and helped organize the Provisional Army of Tennessee.

As Cheatham's chief of staff, Porter took part in the battles of Belmont, Shiloh, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, and the Siege of Atlanta.

[7][8] Like his predecessor, John C. Brown, Porter spent much of his gubernatorial tenure managing the state's out-of-control debt.

In his book Appalachian Aspirations, Professor John Benhart describes Porter (and ex-Governor John C. Brown) as "typical of the New South Conservatives who dominated Tennessee politics during the two decades following Reconstruction, mixing the mores of the Old South with a recognition that industrial capitalism was the wave of the future.

Porter spent the latter part of his life promoting and raising funds for his alma mater, the University of Nashville (from which he had been granted an honorary LL.D.

The fund chose to locate the reorganized college at Vanderbilt's campus, however, leaving Porter embittered.