James Madison Wells (January 7, 1808 – February 28, 1899) was a planter, lawyer, and politician who became the 20th governor of Louisiana during Reconstruction. Although a slave owner, Wells opposed secession and remained loyal to The Union throughout the Civil War. After serving as the ninth lieutenant governor under Michael Hahn, he assumed office as Governor after Hahn was elected to the U.S. Senate.

James Madison Wells was born on New Hope Plantation near Alexandria, Louisiana, on January 7, 1808 to Samuel Levi Wells II and Mary Elizabeth Calvit Wells. His father was a member of Louisiana's constitutional convention in 1811 and died when James was eight years old.

Wells was educated at the Jesuit-run St. Joseph's College in Bardstown south of Louisville, Kentucky; Partridge's Academy, Middletown, Connecticut; and Cincinnati Law School. In Cincinnati, he was tutored in law by an old-line Federalist named Charles Hammond, who edited the Cincinnati Gazette. Hammond's frequent attacks on slavery failed to influence Wells. Wells later owned nearly one hundred slaves.

He moved to New Orleans in 1830 and married Mary Ann Scott with whom he had thirteen children.

In 1833, Wells married 15-year-old Mary Ann Scott; together they had 14 children. Wells inherited a substantial estate; he controlled a large cotton plantation called New Hope near Alexandria, a sugar plantation on Bayou Huffpower in Avoyelles Parish called Wellswood, and a large summer home Jessamine Hill near Lecompte, Louisiana. Wells was appointed Sheriff of Rapides Parish in 1840 by Governor Andre B. Roman. Wells was an active Whig and a large slave holder. Eventually, as the Whig Party collapsed in the 1850s, Wells became a Democrat. His brother, Thomas Jefferson Wells, was the Whig nominee for governor in 1859, against eventual winner Thomas Overton Moore.

In 1860, he supported Stephen A. Douglas, the Northern Democratic candidate for president and was an ardent supporter of the Union. For that, he was criticized by his neighbors and by his brother. During the Civil War, Wells was arrested by Confederate officials for his Union sympathies.^{[citation needed]}

Wells remained on his plantation outside Alexandria until the spring of 1863 when he remarked that the recently deceased Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson should be buried "in a gum coffin, and that the bottom plank might be very thin, so that he might eat his way down to where it was intended that he should go." Soon thereafter, he fled into the woods and briefly organized a band of unionist partisans, or Jayhawkers, to attack rebel supply trains. In November, he left the woods and moved to Union-occupied New Orleans.

By 1864, Union troops controlled all or part of 17 parishes in south Louisiana. Wells formed the Unconditional Union Club of West Louisiana. He was nominated both by radicals such as Benjamin Flanders and moderates such as Michael Hahn, to be Lieutenant Governor.