Fred James Eckert (born May 6, 1941) is an American politician and diplomat who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from New York's 30th congressional district for one term. A friend and political ally of Ronald Reagan, Eckert had previously served as the U.S. ambassador to Fiji, Tonga, Kiribati, and Tuvalu.

Eckert was born in Rochester, New York, and grew up in Greece, New York He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of North Texas, where he majored in government and minored in both history and journalism.

He worked as a journalist for the Richardson Daily News while attending college. He was also a contributing editor to The New Guard, the magazine of Young Americans for Freedom. As a college student, he sold two magazine articles, one to Writer's Digest about lessons he had learned from Bruce Catton, the other to Family Weekly, about billionaire H. L. Hunt, with whom he later conducted a Playboy interview.

Following college and his marriage to his college sweetheart, Karen Laughlin, he served as assistant director of mass communications for the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America and was recruited to join the public relations staff of General Foods, at its White Plains, New York headquarters. While living in the New York City, area he took advanced courses in advertising, public relations and television scriptwriting at New York University and at The New School for Social Research.

Returning to Rochester, he joined the area's largest advertising and public relations agency as an account executive working on Kodak and Mobil accounts. At age 27, he was elected town supervisor of Greece, New York.

In 1972, Eckert was elected to the New York State Senate, defeating incumbent Democrat James E. Powers.

Eckert resigned as state senator when President Ronald Reagan appointed him U.S. ambassador to Fiji. In the position, Eckert also managed diplomatic relations with Tonga, Kiribati, and Tuvalu. Eckert and Reagan had become friends years earlier when Eckert was the only New York State Republican officeholder to endorse Reagan when he challenged President Gerald Ford in the 1976 Republican Party presidential primaries.

Congressional Quarterly ranked Eckert as the member of Congress most supportive of President Reagan and Reader's Digest ran a profile feature portraying him as an example of the sort of "gutsy" leader unintimidated by special interests that Washington needs. In May 1966, the Oxford University Union selected Eckert to debate the British's government Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs on how best to counter international terrorism; Eckert was criticized by newspapers in his district for arguing at Oxford that state-sponsored terrorism needed to be regarded as acts of war as opposed to mere violations of laws and dealt with by effective military force. His one major break with the Reagan administration was his vote in opposition to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which Eckert viewed as rewarding illegal immigrants who broke US immigration law and encouraging more of the same in the future. Reagan later said his signing that bill into law was a mistake.