James Wilder Orr (born Huntington, New York, July 19, 1958) is an American fisheries biologist, ichthyologist, and systematist best known for his studies of skates, rockfishes, snailfishes, and flatfishes.

His work has focused primarily on the phylogenetic relationships, zoogeography, reproductive biology, and behavior of marine teleosts, particularly deep-water benthic taxa.

[3][4] He is widely recognized as an expert on the evolutionary history, distribution, ecology, and behavior of North Pacific fishes in general, but especially the highly species-rich and economically important families Rajidae, Cottidae, Scorpaenidae, and Pleuronectidae.

[5][6] Perhaps his most significant contributions lie in broad-based generic revisions of various taxa, incorporating morphology as well as molecular and early life-history characters;[7][8][9] his Field Guide to Sharks, Skates, and Ratfish of Alaska;[10] "Fishes of the Salish Sea: a compilation and distribution analysis;"[11][12]Annotated Checklist of the Marine Macroinvertebrates of Alaska;[13] and co-author of the three-volume Fishes of the Salish Sea: Puget Sound and the Straits of Georgia and Juan de Fuca published by the University of Washington Press in 2019.

[14][15][16][17] Of great interest also is his study of "Reproductive parasitism between distant phyla: molecular identification of snailfish (Liparidae) egg masses in the gill cavities of king crabs (Lithodidae)" published in 2016.