James Watson Gerard III (August 25, 1867 – September 6, 1951) was a United States lawyer, diplomat, and justice of the New York Supreme Court.

[4] At the request of Gottlieb von Jagow, after the fall of Liège, Gerard served as intermediary for offering the Belgians peace and indemnity if they would grant passage of German troops through their country.

On August 10, 1914, the Kaiser placed in Gerard's hands a telegram addressed personally to Wilson that declared that Belgian neutrality "had to be violated by Germany on strategical grounds."

At the request of a high German official, the telegram was not made public as the Kaiser had wished but was sent privately to the President.

[6][8][9] After an unsuccessful campaign for U.S. president in 1920, Gerard ceased active pursuit of elected office but accepted a central role in U.S. Democratic Party politics as a public speaker, fundraiser, consultant, and mass media contributor.

"We have all of us a right to criticize, to boycott a nation which reverts to the horrible persecutions of the Dark Ages, we have a right to form a blockade of public opinion about this misguided country," he wrote.

Gerard concluded, "It is with sadness, tinged with fear for the world's future, that we read Hitler's hymn of hate against that race which has added so many names to the roll of the great in science, in medicine, in surgery, in music and the arts, in literature and all uplifting human endeavor.

Gerard's wife, the former Mary Augusta Daly (called “Molly”), was the daughter of copper magnate Marcus Daly, head of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company that developed the mines of Butte, Montana, and built the town of Anaconda, Montana.

After both of Mary's parents died, she was one of the heirs to the Daly ranch, the Bitter Root Stock Farm, north of Hamilton, Montana, where the couple had frequently visited.

Gerard oversaw a number of the legal interests of the Daly family, and he purchased a cattle ranch of his own in the area.