Janis Rachel Lomax (born 15 July 1945 in Swansea, Wales) is a British economist, banker, and former government official who served as Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, sitting on the Monetary Policy Committee from 1 July 2003 to 30 June 2008.
After attending Rossall Preparatory School and Cheltenham Ladies' College, Lomax graduated from Girton College, Cambridge University, with an MA in 1966, and obtained an MSc in economics from the London School of Economics in 1968.
After graduating from LSE in 1968, she joined HM Treasury, where she worked on a range of macroeconomic, monetary, and financial issues. She was Principal Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson in the mid-1980s and as his Deputy Chief Economic Adviser in the early 1990s. In 1994 she was head of the Economic and Domestic Secretariat at the Cabinet Office.
From 1995-96, she was a vice president and chief of staff to the World Bank president. From 1996 to 1999, she worked at the Welsh Office, where she oversaw the setting up of the National Assembly for Wales. Afterwards, from 1999 to 2002, Lomax was permanent secretary of the Department for Work and Pensions (formerly the Department of Social Security). Then Lomax served as Permanent Secretary at the Department for Transport, having moved there with her Secretary of State Alistair Darling when prime minister Tony Blair reshuffled his cabinet following the resignation—in highly charged and controversial circumstances—of the Secretary of State for Transport Stephen Byers.