Joseph Hayes Acklen (May 20, 1850 – September 28, 1938) was an American politician who served as a U.S. Representative from Louisiana from 1878 to 1881.

During the American Civil War, his parents sided with the Confederacy, and the father fled to the family's Louisiana plantation, where he died in 1863.

He returned to the United States and graduated from Cumberland University's law school in Lebanon, Tennessee in 1871.

In November of that year, claiming voting fraud, he and other Democrats objected to the reelection of Republican Chester Bidwell Darrall to represent Louisiana's 3rd congressional district; after protracted settlement of the various controversies surrounding the 1876 presidential election, on February 20, 1878, Darrall left the seat and was replaced by Acklen, for the remaining half of the Forty-fifth Congress.

From 1913 to 1914, he served under Democrat U.S. President Woodrow Wilson as chief game warden of the United States.

Acklen was author of numerous articles on ornithology, fish culture, forestry, and field sports.