Oliver Perry Temple (January 27, 1820 – November 2, 1907) was an American attorney, author, judge, and economic promoter active primarily in East Tennessee in the latter half of the 19th century.

In June 1861, he drafted the final resolutions of the pro-Union East Tennessee Convention, and spent much of the first half of the war providing legal defense for Unionists who had been charged with treason by Confederate authorities.

[6] While serving with the militia, Temple was inspired to study law after reading An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by English philosopher John Locke.

He criticized Johnson for voting to censure General Zachary Taylor, opposing a payraise for soldiers, and pandering to Whig voters by attacking President James K. Polk.

Temple later wrote that Johnson, displaying a "haughty air of superiority," dismissed him as a "Juvenile Competitor" and threatened to disgrace him if he didn't withdraw from the race.

[6] In 1850, Temple was appointed by President Millard Fillmore commissioner to help conciliate Indian tribes in territories captured during the Mexican–American War to the United States government.

[6] As secession fervor swept into Knoxville in the wake of the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860, Temple organized a meeting for the city's Unionists at his house to plot a course of action.

[3] They agreed to counter the secessionists at a November 26 citywide assembly at the Knox County Courthouse that had been called to discuss a possible statewide secession convention.

Temple later recalled defusing a confrontation at his office between former Constitutional Union Party candidate John Bell, who had recently switched sides and supported secession, and radical Unionist newspaper editor William G. Brownlow, in May 1861.

[11] He spent much of the first half of the war providing legal defense for Unionists accused of various offenses, including members of East Tennessee bridge-burning conspiracy and several participants in the Great Locomotive Chase.

[3] When the Union Army entered Knoxville in September 1863, Temple joyously ran the length of Gay Street behind a regiment of soldiers.

[2] Temple's annual income of more than $13,000 was the highest reported in the 1870 census in Knox County, edging out the partners of the wholesaling giant, Cowan, McClung and Company.

In the late 1870s and early 1880s, Temple provided legal, agricultural, and promotional assistance to the Rugby Colony, then being developed on the Cumberland Plateau.

[4] Temple retired from the legal profession in 1880,[8] and with the help of Congressman Leonidas C. Houk, was appointed Knox County's postmaster the following year.

Their only child, Mary Boyce Temple (1856–1929), compiled and published Notable Men of Tennessee, a collection of biographies her father had written about various Civil War-era figures.