John Pomeroy Townsend (1832–1898) was an American financier of the Gilded Age.

He proudly claimed descent from "old Puritan stock", tracing his ancestry to a Thomas Townsend who settled at Lynn, Massachusetts in 1637.

[3] Other positions included president of the Municipal Gas-Light Company of Rochester; director of the Long Island Railroad Company; and secretary and manager of the Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled.

[4] Townsend was also a writer on economic matters, his publications including the chapters on U.S. Savings Banks in volume 2 of A History of Banking in all the Leading Nations (1896), as well as writings on the Free Silver controversy.

On 10 September 1898, Townsend died suddenly of a heart attack shortly after dinner at his summer house in Tarrytown, New York.