Walter Lee Williams (born November 3, 1948) is an American former professor of anthropology, history, and gender studies at the University of Southern California.

[1][2] Williams was apprehended in a public park in Playa del Carmen, Mexico in 2013 and extradited to Los Angeles, United States for trial.

[5] In 1979, while Williams was an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati, he and Gregory Sprague founded the Committee on Lesbian and Gay History, an affiliate of the American Historical Association.

[12] While there, Williams collected autobiographical interviews, 27 of which were published as Javanese Lives: Women and Men in Modern Indonesian Society in 1991.

[15] An amateur ethnographer, Williams has also traveled throughout North America from Alaska to Yucatán to study Native American tribes.

His other areas of expertise include cultures of Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, based on his years of field research in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, the Philippines and Polynesia.

[22][23] He was arrested in a public park in Playa del Carmen, Mexico one day after he was put on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list and was extradited to Los Angeles, California for prosecution.