James Dillon Armstrong

James Dillon Armstrong (September 23, 1821 – September 4, 1893) was an American lawyer, politician, and jurist who served in the Virginia Senate from 1855 to 1864, and as Judge of the 4th and 12th West Virginia Judicial Circuits from 1875 to 1892.

Armstrong was born in 1821 in Frankfort, Virginia, and was the son of politician William Armstrong. He began practicing law in Romney in 1844 and was elected as Hampshire County Prosecuting Attorney in 1852. Armstrong served in the Virginia Senate, representing Hampshire, Hardy, and Morgan counties, from 1855 until 1864. During the American Civil War, Armstrong served on Hampshire County's committee of safety. In early 1862, Stonewall Jackson appointed Armstrong as his chief of staff in the Confederate States Army; Armstrong accepted this position but Virginia Governor John Letcher and others persuaded him to reconsider and decline Jackson's appointment because his services were required in the Virginia Senate. Following the war, Armstrong applied for a special pardon and received it from President Andrew Johnson.

In 1872, Armstrong represented West Virginia's 10th Senate district in the state's second constitutional convention. In 1875, he was appointed to serve as Judge of the 4th West Virginia Judicial Circuit and he remained on the bench until his resignation in 1892. Armstrong was active in the Presbyterian Church and in 1850, he became a ruling elder in Romney Presbyterian Church. In 1853, he and his father-in-law William Henry Foote organized Mount Hope Church in present-day Keyser, West Virginia. In the 1860s, Armstrong was a member of the General Assembly that organized the Presbyterian Church in the United States. Armstrong was one of the reestablishing members of the Romney Literary Society and he served on the Bank of Romney's board of directors when it was established in 1888. Armstriong died in Romney in 1893.