James Hansen Newman (born October 16, 1956) is an American physicist and a former NASA astronaut who flew on four Space Shuttle missions.

His doctoral work at Rice University was in the design, construction, testing, and use of a new position-sensitive detection system for measuring differential cross sections of collisions of atoms and molecules.

His technical assignments since then include: Astronaut Office Mission Support Branch where he was part of a team responsible for crew ingress/strap-in prior to launch and crew egress after landing; Mission Development Branch working on the Shuttle on-board laptop computers; Chief of the Computer Support Branch in the Astronaut Office, responsible for crew involvement in the development and use of computers on the Space Shuttle and Space Station.

Effective December 1, 2002, Newman served as NASA's Director, Human Space Flight Programs, Russia.

As NASA's lead representative to the Russian Aviation and Space Agency (Rosaviakosmos) and its contractors, his role is to continue oversight of all human space flight operations, logistics, and technical functions, including NASA's mission operations in Korolev and crew training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City.

STS-51 Discovery, (September 12–22, 1993) was launched from and returned to make the first night landing at Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

STS-69 Endeavour (September 7–18, 1995), was an eleven-day mission during which the crew successfully deployed and retrieved a SPARTAN satellite and the Wake Shield Facility (WSF).

He also operated the on-orbit tests of the Ku-band Communications Adaptor, the Relative GPS experiment, and the RMS Manipulator Positioning Display.

The crew also performed IMAX Cargo Bay Camera (ICBC) operations, and deployed two satellites, Mighty Sat 1, sponsored by the Air Force, and SAC-A, from Argentina.