John Henry de Villiers

The Right Honourable The Lord de Villiers KCMG, PC
Chief Justice of South Africa
In office 1910–1914
Monarch	King George V
Preceded by	New position
Succeeded by	James Rose Innes
Chief Justice of the Cape Colony
In office 1874–1910
Succeeded by	position replaced by Chief Justice of South Africa
Attorney General of Cape Colony
In office 1872–1874
Monarch	Queen Victoria
Preceded by	William Porter
Succeeded by	Simeon Jacobs

John Henry de Villiers, 1st Baron de Villiers KCMG PC (15 June 1842 – 2 September 1914), was a Cape lawyer and judge. He was Attorney-General in the Molteno Government, Chief Justice for the Cape Colony, and later the first Chief Justice for the Union of South Africa.

John de Villiers was the son of Charles Christian de Villiers, of Paarl, Cape of Good Hope and his wife Dorothea Retief. His family was of French Huguenot descent and had arrived in the Cape four generations before in 1689.

His father's dying wish had been that he become a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, however after 18 months study he found that he had no true calling to the church, and switched to studying law. He studied in Berlin and London (where he read law at the Inner Temple), was called to the English bar in 1865 and the Cape bar the next year. William Porter, the Attorney General at the time, became his legal mentor and soon afterwards he entered parliament representing Worcester.

In parliament, he and Porter supported John Molteno's movement for responsible government in 1872, even helping to draft the bill that secured it.

In November 1872, after the Cape successfully attained self-government, the country's unpopular Attorney General William Griffith was retired. John de Villiers was called upon to replace him as Attorney-General of the Cape Colony in Molteno's cabinet. He served for only two years, from 1872 to 1874.

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