Mills Edwin Godwin Jr. (November 19, 1914 – January 30, 1999) was an American politician who was the 60th and 62nd governor of Virginia for two non-consecutive terms, from 1966 to 1970 and from 1974 to 1978.

He was the last Virginia governor elected as a part of the Byrd Machine, the conservative Democratic establishment that dominated the state's politics for over three decades.

In the state senate, Godwin was one of the leaders of the segregationist policy of "massive resistance", which aimed to prevent the implementation of federal court decisions under Brown v. Board of Education requiring that black students be admitted to white schools.

Despite the third-party challenge, Godwin defeated Republican Linwood Holton (who would succeed him as governor in 1970) by a 48%-36% margin, with Story winning 13 percent of the vote.

(American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell, running as an independent, won 1.02 percent of the vote.)

Howell was a self-styled "populist," but many conservatives saw him simply as a liberal whose push to the governor's office they believed had to be stopped.

In December 1975, Governor Godwin ordered the James River and its tributaries closed to fishing from Richmond to the Chesapeake Bay.

Kepone is a chemical pesticide that was produced by Allied Signal Company in Hopewell, Virginia and caused a nationwide pollution controversy.

In 1976, Governor Godwin supported the bid of President Gerald R. Ford Jr., for the Republican presidential nomination, against challenger Ronald Reagan.

The Virginia Republican Party convention of that year, however, elected a largely pro-Reagan delegation to the 1976 Republican National Convention, although as a courtesy Godwin was designated as co-chairman of the delegation (but was required to share the co-chairmanship with Reagan supporter Richard D. Obenshain).

After the end of his second gubernatorial term, Godwin worked behind the scenes in the Virginia Republican Party until shortly before his death.

Godwin was a leader of the "massive resistance" movement, which used state laws to close schools rather than comply with federal orders to open them to black students.