Joseph Willard (December 29, 1738 – September 25, 1804) was an American Congregational clergyman and academic.

He was a tutor at Harvard until 1772, when he began serving as pastor at the First Congregational Church in Beverly, Massachusetts.

His tenure was marked by his institution of a dress code (due to his disapproval of the brightly colored silk garments often worn by pupils) consisting of blue-gray coats, and breeches and waistcoats in four approved colors.

[4] His great-grandfather Samuel Willard had served as Acting President of Harvard from 1701 until his own death in 1707.

[5][6] He published a few sermons, a Latin address on the death of George Washington, prefixed to David Tappan's Discourse (Cambridge, 1800), and mathematical and astronomical papers in the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society.