James B Beard (September 24, 1935 – May 14, 2018) was an American agronomist.

Born in Piqua, Ohio to James Hart and Margaret Bashore Beard, James B Beard was raised in Bradford, Ohio. He attended Ohio State University, graduating with a in Agronomy in 1957 and completed graduate education at Purdue University.^[1][2] He began teaching at Michigan State University in 1961, and joined the Texas A&M University faculty in 1975.^[2] Over the course of his career, Beard was named a fellow of the Crop Science Society of America, American Society of Agronomy and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.^[3] He retired in 1992,^[2] and left his writings to Michigan State's Turfgrass Information Center in 2003.^[4] The next year, Purdue granted Beard an honorary doctorate in agriculture.^[5] In 2009, Beard received the Veitch Memorial Medal awarded by the Royal Horticultural Society,^[1] followed by the Crop Science Society of America Presidential Award in 2014.^[6] Beard died in Bryan, Texas, on May 14, 2018, aged 82.^[1]