James Turner Morehead (August 6, 1840 – April 20, 1908) was an American chemist and entrepreneur.

The son of Governor John Motley Morehead and First Lady Ann Eliza Lindsay Morehead, he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1861, where he joined Beta Theta Pi.

[1] Commissioned a lieutenant in the Confederate army, he was wounded at Bristoe Station, Virginia in 1863; he ended the war as a major.

He and his son, John Motley Morehead III, would found one of the world's leading chemical companies — Union Carbide, assisted by Thomas Willson, who discovered calcium carbide at one of his furnaces.

A serial entrepreneur, chemist, engineer, inventor and author of scientific works, Morehead later entered into cotton manufacturing.