Harry Thomas Edwards (born November 3, 1940) is an American lawyer and jurist serving as a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He is also a professor of law at the New York University School of Law. Edwards was appointed to the D.C. Circuit in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter and served as its chief judge from 1994 to 2001. He assumed senior status in 2005.

Edwards was born on November 3, 1940, in New York City, the oldest of three children born to Arline Ross Edwards and George H. Edwards. His parents were divorced in 1950 and Edwards and his two sisters, Verne Debourg and Pamela Matthews, were raised by their mother. From 1952 to 1953, his mother attended Smith College, where she earned a Master's degree in social work. While his mother was away, Edwards lived with his grandparents, in the Harlem section of Manhattan. When his mother returned, the family moved to Long Island, where Edwards attended Uniondale High School and was president of the first graduating class.

Edwards received a Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University in 1962 and a Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School in 1965. He graduated from law school with distinction and was a member of the Michigan Law Review and the Order of the Coif. When he graduated from Michigan, he was the only African American (law student or member of the faculty) in the law school.

During his time in Michigan, Edwards spent time with his father, George H. Edwards, a long-time member of the Michigan House of Representatives; his stepmother, Esther Gordy Edwards, a senior vice president at Motown Record Company; and Berry Gordy, Jr., the founder of Motown Record Company.

Despite his very strong academic record in law school, Edwards had difficulty finding a job in the legal profession because he was black. Every major law firm to which he applied openly rejected him because of his race. It was only after Professor Russell Smith, his mentor at Michigan, interceded on his behalf that he was hired at Seyfarth, Shaw, Fairweather & Geraldson. He worked with the firm in Chicago from 1965 to 1970, specializing in labor law and collective bargaining.

In 1970, Edwards joined the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School and became the first African American to teach there. His teaching and scholarship focused on labor law, collective bargaining, labor law in the public sector, employment discrimination, arbitration, negotiations, and higher education and the law. In 1974, he and his then-wife Becky, and their children, Brent and Michelle, traveled to Brussels, Belgium, where Edwards was a Visiting Professor of Law at the Free University of Brussels. In 1975, Edwards accepted an invitation to visit at Harvard Law School. He was a Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School during the 1975–76 school year and then accepted a tenured position on the law school faculty in 1976. While at Harvard, Edwards was also a faculty member at the Institute for Educational Management at Harvard University from 1976 through 1982. During this period, he co-authored a book on Higher Education and the Law, which was a major shift in his academic work. In the spring of 1977, Edwards and his family returned to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he rejoined the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School. In 1980, Edwards was the co-author of four different casebooks (the only legal scholar in the country at the time to achieve the feat).

In 1977, Edwards was nominated by President Carter and confirmed by the Senate to serve on the Board of Directors of Amtrak. He was subsequently elected Chairman by the other members of the Board. He resigned his position with Amtrak when he was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1980. From 1970 until 1980, Edwards served as neutral labor arbitrator on a number of major company and union arbitration panels; he was also Vice President of the National Academy of Arbitrators.

When President Carter took office in 1977, among the active federal court of appeals judges, there was only one woman, and only two Black judges. To address this situation, the President established merit selection panels to identify and recommend highly qualified female and minority attorneys for appointment to the federal bench. In 1979, the judicial selection panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sent nine names to then-Attorney General Griffin Bell. From that list, President Carter nominated Patricia Wald, Abner Mikva, and Edwards to serve on the court. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was later nominated when an additional opening arose on the D.C. Circuit. Edwards was nominated by the President on December 6, 1979, to a seat vacated by Judge David L. Bazelon, and confirmed by the United States Senate on February 20, 1980, and he received his judicial commission on February 20, 1980. He was 39 years old when he joined the court, reputedly the youngest federal court of appeals judge sitting at the time.