James J. Lyons (February 12, 1890 – January 7, 1966) was an American Democratic Party politician, who served as Borough President of the Bronx from 1934–1962.

To drive his point home, in his career he sold enough leather to cover four million pairs of women's feet.

He then decided he would set up the "Henry Curran University" in order to correct all grammar mistakes made in the city, in an effort to mock the Deputy Mayor.

When Long Beach Airport was being built in Queens, Lyons was instrumental in getting it to be named after Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.

In 1914 the unused bend of the Harlem River was filled in, physically connecting Marble Hill, a part of Manhattan, to the borough of The Bronx.

[1] Lyons had climbed "up on top of a jagged rock outcropping [and] planted the borough’s flag, emblazoned with “Ne cede malis” (Yield not to Evil).

Lyons was the sister of Bella Salomon and the sister-in-law of Bronx attorney H. Bennett Salomon who briefly represented Bruno Richard Hauptmann convicted of kidnapping aviator Charles Lindbergh's twenty month old son in what was called the crime of the century.