James Steptoe Johnston (June 9, 1843 – November 4, 1924) was an American Confederate veteran, preacher and educator.

[1] He was the son of a local attorney and cotton planter James Steptoe Johnston and his wife Louisa Clarissa Bridges Newman.

Some time after the Battle of Sharpsburg or Antietam on September 17, 1862, Johnston was commissioned a lieutenant in the Cavalry Corps, Army of Northern Virginia.

He saw action at the Second Battle of Bull Run and other cavalry engagements before being captured by Union forces and spending one year as a prisoner of war.

After the war, Johnston studied law then practiced as an attorney until 1867, when he began to read for holy orders in the Episcopal Church.

In 1887, he was elected as the second bishop of the Missionary District of western Texas and was awarded a Doctorate of Divinity from the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee, in the same year.

He particularly stressed the need for an educated élite in such an environment, and to this end founded in 1893 a Church school he named the West Texas Military Academy (now TMI — The Episcopal School of Texas) to provide a classical and Christian education for young men in the area.