James B. McMillan was the US District Court judge for the Western District of North Carolina who ordered the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC, board of education to use busing to integrate their schools in 1970. The appeal later became the landmark Supreme Court case Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 US 1 (1971).

Judge McMillan, one of President Johnson's last appointments to the federal bench, was burned in effigy, received death threats, and had to be escorted to and from the courthouse by federal marshals as a result of his decision.

McMillan served on the District Court from June 1968 until his retirement in 1992. He died of cancer in March 1995, at the age of 78.