James Madison Nabrit Jr. (September 7, 1900 – December 27, 1997) was a prominent American civil rights attorney who won several important arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, served as president of Howard University for much of the 1960s, and was appointed Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Nabrit Jr. graduated from Morehouse College in 1923 and from Northwestern University Law School in 1927.

[5] Beginning in the 1940s and through the 1950s, Nabrit handled a number of civil rights cases for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, working with prominent attorneys such as Thurgood Marshall, later a Supreme Court justice.

Notably, Nabrit argued Bolling v. Sharpe, a companion case of Brown v. Board of Education.

[6] He returned to the presidency of Howard from 1968 to 1969,[4] stepping down under pressure from the American Association of University Professors after he expelled 18 disruptive students.