Robert Ridgway (April 21, 1823 – October 16, 1870) was a nineteenth-century congressman, lawyer and journalist from Virginia.

Admitted to the Virginia bar, Ridgway began his legal practice in Liberty, Virginia (the Bedford county seat, which was incorporated in 1839 as a town, and renamed Bedford two decades after his death).

However "Richard S. Ridgeway" enlisted as a private in Company D of the 6th Virginia Cavalry on April 18, 1861, then went AWOL in September and was discharged on December 23, 1861, based on a surgeon's certificate concerning hip damage in a railroad accident.

[4] Shortly the war's end, in 1866, voters in Bedford, Amherst and nearby counties elected Ridgway as a Whig to the United States House of Representatives.

After Virginians ratified a new state constitution in 1869 (without its proposed bar on former Confederates holding office), voters in the 5th Congressional district elected Ridgway as a Conservative to the House, and he served from January 1870 until his death on October 16, 1870, in Amherst, Virginia.