James Scott Macdonald (1896[1]-1985[2]) was a Canadian career diplomat.

He graduated Queen's University, and served in the First World War from 1915 to 1919.

[3] Macdonald worked for the Department of Trade and Commerce from 1926 until 1928 and then was appointed to the Department of External Affairs in 1928, where he served in postings in Paris, Geneva, and Washington.

He acted as a technical advisor on trade negotiations with France and Australia and was Secretary of the Canadian delegation at the Imperial Economic Conference of 1932.

[4] In the latter role, he helped facilitate the immigration to Canada of Hungarian forestry students from Sopron University who had fled to refugee camps in Austria after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.