James Freeman (b. 1926; d. 1997) whose full name was James Shepherd Freeman, Jr., was the son of famed World War II Admiral James Shepherd Freeman and grandson of Alabama millionaire James Stanley Freeman. Known as "Jim" Freeman, he was a prominent corporate and political figure in the 1960s-1970s and the only heir to his grandfather's investment fortune.

As a youth, he dated actress Shirley Temple while living in Hawaii. His father was at the time the commander of the US Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. After recieving a medical discharge from the United States Naval Academy, he graduated from Auburn University in 1948. That same year, Freeman married Betty Jeane Pierce, a great grand-niece of the former president Franklin Pierce and daughter of newspaper publisher Edgar H. Pierce. After retiring as a senior Union Carbide executive in 1979, he was asked by then-candidate Ronald Reagan to serve as Secretary of Labor for his first presidential term. He had five children and ten grandchildren.