James Leigh Joynes (27 September 1824 – 29 June 1908) was an English clergyman and schoolmaster.

[3] He matriculated at King's College, Cambridge, in Easter 1844, became a scholar, won the Camden Medal in 1845, and graduated with a BA in 1848 and an MA in 1851.

[9] On his retirement in 1887, a caricature of Joynes brandishing a birch, by Leslie Ward, was published in Vanity Fair.

[9][10] Joynes married Elisabeth Johanna, daughter of Christopher Hermann Unger of Neuwied, Germany, on 22 April 1851, at St Peter's, Pimlico.

[1] He was the father of James Leigh Joynes Jr. and the father-in-law of Henry Stephens Salt.