Christopher Joseph "Gus" Loria (born July 9, 1960, in Belmont, Massachusetts) is a retired United States Marine Corps Colonel and a medically retired NASA astronaut. He was originally scheduled to fly on STS-113 as pilot; however, he was grounded from spaceflight due to a severe back injury.

Colonel "CJ" Loria was born in Belmont, Massachusetts. His mother, Joan Loria, is deceased and his father, Robert L. Loria is deceased.

Loria graduated from Belmont High School in 1978 and the U.S. Naval Academy Preparatory School in 1979. He entered the U.S. Naval Academy shortly after and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in general engineering in 1983, and is a Distinguished Hispanic graduate of the Naval Academy. He later completed 30 credits of coursework toward a Master of Science degree in aeronautical engineering at the Florida Institute of Technology. In 2004 he earned a Master in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University where he was twice selected as a Harvard University Fellow. As a Fellow he worked on clean energy technology, and CO₂ sequestration. In June 2008 he earned an Executive Certificate in Business Management and Leadership from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Loria received his commission after graduating from Annapolis in 1983, and was designated a Naval Aviator in July 1988. He transitioned to the F/A-18 Hornet with Strike Fighter Squadron 125 (VFA-125) at Naval air Station Lemoore, California, during August 1988 through August 1989. His next assignment was with Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 314 (VMFA-314) the "Black Knights" at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, California. While assigned to the Black Knights he deployed to Bahrain for Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm where he flew 42 combat missions in support of allied operations and earned three citations for valor. In 1992, while assigned as an instructor pilot to Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 101 (VMFAT-101) he was selected for the United States Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

January 1994 to July 1996, he was assigned to the Strike Aircraft Test Squadron, Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, as an experimental test pilot. Loria distinguished himself in the areas of high angle of attack flight test, aircraft departure and spin testing, ordnance, flight controls and aircraft flying qualities testing for the F/A-18 Hornet, NASA F/A-18 'HARV' thrust vectoring aircraft and the X-31A aircraft. Colonel Loria was the Naval Test Wing Atlantic's test pilot of the year in 1995. In 1996 he was the runner up for the Society of Experimental Test Pilot's coveted Iven C. Kinchloe Award for the test pilot of the year world-wide.

From August 2004 through February 2005 he was assigned as the Deputy Chief Engineer, Constellation Program at NASA Headquarters. In the fall of 2005 a NASA medical evaluation determined that his previous injuries disqualified him from further space flight assignments. Colonel Loria requested a transfer back to the US Marine Corps and left NASA in February 2005.

After returning to the Marine Corps from NASA, he served as the Inspector General for the 1st Marine Air Wing, Okinawa, Japan and served as the Director of Operations (J3) for Cheyenne Mountain Complex, NORAD before retiring from military service on December 1, 2008.

He has 3,079 hours of flight time and has flown 32 different aircraft.