John Barnes Nicholson (1840 – 17 February 1919) was an English-born Australian politician.
He was born at Biglands in Cumbria to farmer John Nicholson and Mary Lightfoot.
He worked as a coalminer from a young age, travelling widely to Vancouver and California before settling in New South Wales in 1882.
He mined at Newcastle and then at Bulli, and was a local secretary of the Miners' Union.
He transferred to the seat of Wollongong in 1904 and held it until 1917, when he was defeated after defecting to the Nationalist Party in the 1916 conscription split.