James Henry Oliver (26 April 1905 – 3 April 1981) was an American ancient historian and epigrapher, especially notable for his work on Ancient Athens.
Oliver was born on 26 April 1905 in New York City to James Henry Oliver and Louise McGratty. He completed his undergraduate studies at Yale in 1926 and his doctoral studies at the same university in 1931. His doctoral supervisors were George Lincoln Henderson and Michael Rostovtzeff. He was a visiting student at the University of Bonn for one year (1927/28) and the American Academy in Rome as Jesse R. Carter fellow 1928–30. After his doctorate, he taught at Yale and then served as field epigrapher for the excavations of the Athenian Agora being carried out by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens from 1932 to 1936.
In 1936, Oliver was appointed assistant professor of history at Columbia University and became a member of the managing committee of the American School at Athens in 1938. He enlisted in the American army during World War II and was promoted to the rank of major. After he was discharged from the army in 1946, he was appointed Professor of Classics at Johns Hopkins University, where he was promoted to Francis White Professor of Greek in 1957. He became a member of the American School's publications committee in 1952 and an editor of American Journal of Philology. He was a senior fellow of the Center for Hellenic Studies from 1962 to 1971. He retired in 1970. He was president of the American Philological Association for 1973/74.
Oliver's chief academic interest was the Greek East under the Roman empire, especially in Athens. He studied this topic through literature, with book length studies on the Roman Oration and the Panathenaic Discourse of Aelius Aristides, and also through inscriptions, especially at Athens, where he was responsible for the first publication of hundreds of inscriptions from the Athenian Agora excavations. One assessment of his work held that:
He married Janet Carnochan in Athens on 26 June 1936, and died in Baltimore on 3 April 1981.