James Quigg Newton Jr. (August 3, 1911 – April 4, 2003) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the mayor of Denver, Colorado from 1947 to 1955.
Newton was born in Denver; his father was a businessman there. Newton was educated in Denver and then studied at Yale Law School. He worked for the Denver law firm of Lewis & Grant before founding his own law firm. His firm merged with Lewis & Grant in 1947 to form Lewis, Grant, Newton, Davis & Henry, which later became Lewis, Grant & Davis, and then Davis Graham & Stubbs. His colleague and Yale classmate Richard Davis married his sister Nancy.[1][2]
Newton served as a legal officer in the US Navy in the Second World War. He married Virginia Shafroth in 1942; she was the granddaughter of John F. Shafroth who served as US Senator and Governor of Colorado.[2] They had four daughters.[1]
In 1947, aged 35, he ran for the office of mayor, and defeated the incumbent, Benjamin F. Stapleton, who first became mayor in 1923.[2] Newton was reelected in 1951, but declined to run for a third term in 1955.
After leaving office as mayor, and spending time as a vice-president of the Ford Foundation, he was president of the University of Colorado from 1956 to 1963. He served on the Republican National Committee.[3] He was president of the Commonwealth Fund in New York from 1963 to 1976, and then spent time in California. He returned to practice law at Davis Graham & Stubbs from 1981 to his death in 2003.[1][2] Newton was the first mayor of Denver to have been born in the city.[1]
