Breese Jacob Stevens (March 22, 1834 – October 28, 1903) was an American attorney from New York state who relocated to Madison, Wisconsin to begin his law practice. There he conducted "some of the most important railroad, land grant and water litigations of [Wisconsin] and Michigan, in all these years enjoying an enviable distinction for conservatism, command of large affairs, great wisdom and a supreme sense of justice shading into generosity in all professional and business relations," according to the State Bar of Wisconsin.

He was elected the 20th mayor of Madison, and later was a leader on the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin. Twenty-three years after his death, the city of Madison built its first municipal athletic facility on land purchased from the Stevens estate for $35,000, naming the ballpark Breese Stevens Field.

Stevens was born March 22, 1834 at Sconondoa (Vernon), in Oneida County in New York state, the son of prominent business man Augustus Caesar Stevens and Elizabeth (Breese) Stevens. He was the descendant of generations of prosperous families.

He was raised in Buffalo, Flint, Michigan, and Vernon, and attended academies in Oneida, Whitesboro, and Cazenovia. He graduated from Hamilton College in 1853. After studying under professor Theodore W. Dwight at Hamilton, Stevens decided to become a lawyer. He briefly studied law under the mentorship of the abolitionist congressman Timothy Jenkins at Oneida Castle, and completed his studies under lawyer and financier Nathan F. Graves of Syracuse. In 1856 he received his Master of Arts degree from Hamilton.

During the 1850s Stevens’ maternal uncle Sidney John Breese was a successful real estate agent in Janesville, Wisconsin. In 1856 he invited Stevens to come to Wisconsin to participate in the booming region, but that summer Mr. Breese succumbed to a fever on a trip back to New York. Stevens’ uncle Samuel Breese beckoned him to come west and take care of Sidney’s estate. After he arrived in Madison, he was admitted to the State Bar of Wisconsin, and began his law practice in 1857. He continued with various law partners until his death in 1903.

Stevens purchased a 106-acre plat west of the university campus, adjacent to the area that would become the mustering grounds of Camp Randall. Later moving to a luxurious home on downtown’s Mansion Hill, Stevens sold his property that would later become the University Heights Historic District. He would also own a “gentleman’s farm” on Madison's Lake Mendota.

In the legal business of his railroad, land and improvement companies, Stevens was active in the litigations over land grants, water power and corporation tax and foreclosure proceedings. He was attorney for the trustees of the Fox & Wisconsin River Improvement Company for many years. He also was the acting president of the Green Bay & Mississippi Canal Company from 1866-1880, serving as its attorney and board director.

He was the lead attorney for various railroads such as the Madison & Portage Railroad and for the Chicago, Madison and Northern Railroad. In 1866 he was also the attorney for the Wisconsin end of the Illinois Central system. Stevens was a director of the Consumers’ Gas Company of Chicago, longtime attorney and manager of the Michigan Land & Iron Company, and president of the Madison Land & Lumber Company, the Monona Land Company, and a director of the First National Bank of Madison.