Silas Uriah Pinney (March 3, 1833 – April 1, 1899) was an American lawyer, jurist, and Democratic politician from Madison, Wisconsin.

He was raised and educated there until age 13, when he moved west with his parents, settling in Dane County, Wisconsin Territory, in 1846.

[2] There was little educational infrastructure in the new settlement, so Pinney was mostly self-taught for the next several years, relying on whatever books were available from his parents or neighbors.

[4] Vilas retired from the firm in 1856, and Roys died in 1857; Pinney subsequently partnered with J. C. Gregory and Chauncey Abbott.

In the Fall of 1860, he was the Democratic Party nominee for Dane County district attorney, but lost the general election to Elisha W.

[9] Politically, Pinney was a supporter of Stephen A. Douglas, and remained active in the Democratic Party throughout the Civil War.

[6] In the latter half of the 1860s, Pinney's legal and political reputation had grown such that he began earning discussion for high office.

At the time, the district comprised the city of Madison and a strip of rural towns in central Dane County.

Pinney initially stuck with his party's preferred Senate candidate, Edward S. Bragg,[18] but eventually compromised with anti-Carpenter Republicans to elect Angus Cameron.

When it was rumored in 1890 that Wisconsin chief justice Orsamus Cole would retire at the end of his term, Pinney was again discussed as a top contender to succeed him.

He formally launched his campaign in December 1890,[24] and quickly secured the support of the vast majority of the state and regional bar associations.

[28] The last lingering opposition to his candidacy came from the Democrats in the Milwaukee Journal, who took issue with Pinney's legal representation of the Republican former state treasurers Edward C. McFetridge and Henry B. Harshaw, who faced a politically-charged prosecution from the Democratic attorney general, James L. O'Connor, over an allegation of embezzlement.

[29][30] Democratic discontent with Pinney ultimately launched a campaign for former circuit judge Eleazor H. Ellis.

[31] Pinney took office in January 1892, but could not serve his entire term; he retired in November 1898 due to poor health.

His father, Justin Pinney, served as Windsor town chairman in 1854 and was an ex officio member of the Dane County Board of Supervisors.

After their son's death, they adopted a daughter, Bessie, who also died young in an accident of a runaway horse-drawn carriage in 1891.