Sam Houston Clinton, Jr. (September 17, 1923 – October 5, 2004) was a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge, who as a lawyer represented both atheist leader Madalyn Murray O'Hair and Jack Ruby, the man who shot and killed presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
He was an aide to congressman W.R. "Bob" Poage of Texas from 1949 to 1950 and an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board in 1951.
He was able to get the guilty verdict against Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner who killed Lee Harvey Oswald on national television, reversed on appeal, based on procedural errors.
In addition to representing O'Hair, Clinton won a lawsuit to desegregate women's dormitories at the University of Texas at Austin in the late 1960s.
On October 5, 2004, Judge Clinton died, at the age of 81, of Alzheimer's disease at a retirement home in Austin, Texas.