Howard Golden (November 6, 1925 – January 24, 2024) was an American lawyer and politician in the Democratic Party who served as the borough president of Brooklyn from January 3, 1977, to December 31, 2001. He concurrently served as chairman of the Brooklyn Democratic Party from January 1984 to October 1990. Golden also served on the New York City Council from 1970 until 1976.

Howard Golden was born to a Jewish family in Flatbush, Brooklyn, on November 6, 1925. His father, Jack, owned a delicatessen that ultimately burned down; thereafter, the elder Golden worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Golden was primarily raised in Hell's Kitchen (along with stints in Bensonhurst and the Navy Yard area) and attended public schools. When his son was 16, Jack Golden died from complications of a head-on collision after falling from a truck at the Navy Yard, forcing Golden's mother to "start a new career doing administrative work for the city’s welfare department."

After graduating from Stuyvesant High School, Golden served as a United States Navy pharmacist's mate during World War II; in this capacity, he was part of the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944. Although he was admitted to Harvard University following the war, he decided to remain in the city to support his family, instead earning his undergraduate degree from New York University on the G.I. Bill in 1950 while working as a men's clothing salesman. He received his LL.B. from Brooklyn Law School in 1953 and was admitted to the New York state bar in 1954.

In the decade that followed, Golden was an attorney in private practice based out of Downtown Brooklyn's Court Street district, where he first became acquainted with future New York Governor Mario Cuomo and other contemporaries relegated to the implicitly deprecatory "Court Street lawyer" milieu amid enduring discrimination against Jewish and Italian American attorneys at Manhattan white-shoe firms during the epoch.

His political career commenced in earnest when he gained control of the Borough Park-based Roosevelt Democratic Club in 1967 by "organizing a rebellion against the entrenched officials and getting himself elected district leader"; under Golden's aegis, the Roosevelt Club ranked among the foremost Democratic organizations in New York City for several decades, serving as the political home for myriad elected officials, judges, commissioners and municipal patronage employees.

Golden was elected to the New York City Council from a Borough Park and Kensington-based district in November 1969 before being sworn into office in January 1970. (Although Kensington had been characterized as the western section of Flatbush in an official New York City publication as late as 1966, it had recently been placed under the jurisdiction of the Borough Park-based Community Board 12, while a substantial swath of the western section of the community—including Golden's longtime residence—was encompassed by the Roosevelt Club-controlled 48th Assembly District; coupled with Golden customarily being described as a Borough Park-based figure in press accounts, this likely fostered the increased perception of Kensington as a discrete neighborhood in the 1970s and beyond.) He was reelected to a second four-year term in 1974 before resigning from the City Council in December 1976. During his Council service, Golden sponsored 1970 legislation that suspended municipal alternate side of the street parking regulations on state and national holidays and on Judeo-Christian holy days; this enduringly popular exemption has expanded to observances of the Chinese New Year, Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha and Diwali in subsequent decades.

In the November 1976 election, Brooklyn Borough President Sebastian Leone ran for a judicial seat on the New York State Supreme Court (a role then widely considered to be the apogee of a New York City-based political career) instead of running for re-election as borough president. He won, and resigned on December 31 to take his new position. Under the era's statutes, the New York City Council's Brooklyn delegation formally selected Golden to serve as interim borough president until the next election. Golden decided to run for the office in the following election, and in November 1977 he won a four-way race by a wide margin.

While he had served in the nominal second-highest local party role (chairman of the Kings County Democratic county committee) for many years, Golden's January 1984 selection as county leader (a role obliquely designated as chairman of the executive committee of the Kings County Democratic Party) by the retiring Meade Esposito initially vexed many observers because erstwhile Esposito protégé Anthony J. Genovesi (regarded as a "prodigal son" by Esposito because he "openly [salivated]" for his retirement) had been endorsed by Mayor Ed Koch and Assembly Speaker Stanley Fink.