James Etheldred Williams (January 16, 1826 – April 10, 1900) was an American politician who served as a two-term mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, during Reconstruction.
Born in Grainger County, Tennessee, the second of ten children, he began working in Knoxville in the post office and, with his cousins, operated a line of steamboats on the Tennessee River from that city to Decatur, Alabama.
He moved to Atlanta in October 1851, and with his Tennessee connections was able to set up a prosperous warehousing business.
He built a larger warehouse on Decatur Street in Atlanta with an upper floor that was used as the popular theater of the time, the Atheneum.
Politically, he was "Always a Democrat, strongly opposed to Whiggery, Know-Nothingism and Abolitionism"[1] and was a staunch secessionist.