James Bryan McMillan

James Bryan McMillan (December 19, 1916 – March 4, 1995) was a United States federal judge.

Born in Goldsboro, North Carolina, McMillan received an A.B. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1937 and an LL.B. from Harvard Law School in 1940. He was a Staff attorney for the North Carolina Attorney General's Office from 1940 to 1942. He was in the United States Navy Senior Lieutenant during World War II, from 1942 to 1946. He was in private practice in Charlotte, North Carolina from 1946 to 1968. He was a Judge pro tem on the Charlotte City Court, Charlotte from 1947 to 1951.

He was a Lecturer at the University of North Carolina School of Law from 1975 to 1979. He was a Lecturer at the University of Florida College of Law from 1979 to 1980. For many years, he returned to Harvard, where he had won the Ames Moot Court Competition, to teach a short course.

McMillan was a federal judge on the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina. McMillan was nominated by President Lyndon B. Johnson on April 25, 1968, to a seat vacated by Wilson Warlick. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on June 6, 1968, and received his commission on June 7, 1968.

In the spring of 1970, McMillan became one of the first U.S district court judges to explicitly approve busing as a remedy for racially segregated schools. In the case, McMillan also set racial balance as a standard by which progress in desegregation could be measured. Instantly controversial, McMillan received death threats due to his opinion, and needed to be placed under police protection. The case (Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education) soon reached the Supreme Court, where it was the subject of intense debate and negotiations among the justices.

Eventually, a unanimous Court ruled to uphold McMillan's orders. McMillan achieved temporary fame in the aftermath of this decision, appearing in newspapers across the country, including The New York Times.

The best-selling book on the Supreme Court, THE BRETHREN, discussed Justice Byron White's fascination with McMillan's opinion, based in close and concise facts. While considering the case, McMillan visited every public school in the entire district, to gain an immediate sense of the places involved in the decision, and calculated the school-bus-miles per average student before and after his decision. Fewer child-bus-miles resulted. Both before and after the Swann decision, he was named best trial judge in North Caroline by the North Carolina state bar, of which he had been president when appointed to the bench.