James Samuel Thomas Stranahan (April 25, 1808 – September 3, 1898) was a United States Representative from New York, and a municipal official of the City of Brooklyn.

Born in Peterboro, Madison County, New York, to Samuel Stranahan and Lynda Josselyn,[2] he attended the common schools and Cazenovia Seminary.

He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1856 to the Thirty-fifth Congress and was appointed as a member of the metropolitan police commission on January 1, 1857.

[4] For his work in this regard, he became known as the "Baron Haussman of Brooklyn," a not-always-complimentary reference to the man who famously altered Paris's urban fabric.

[2] Stranahan died at his summer home in Saratoga Springs in 1898; interment was in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn.