James Enos Clyburn (born July 21, 1940) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for South Carolina's 6th congressional district. First elected in 1992, Clyburn is in his 17th term, representing a congressional district that includes most of the majority-black precincts in and around Columbia and Charleston, as well as most of the majority-black areas outside Beaufort and nearly all of South Carolina's share of the Black Belt. Since Joe Cunningham's departure in 2021, Clyburn has been the only Democrat in South Carolina's congressional delegation and as well as the dean of this delegation since 2011 after fellow Democrat John Spratt lost re-election.

Clyburn served as the third-ranking House Democrat, behind Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, from 2007 until 2023, serving as majority whip behind Pelosi and Hoyer during periods of Democratic House control, and as assistant Democratic leader behind Pelosi and Hoyer during periods of Republican control. He was House Majority Whip from 2007 to 2011 and again from 2019 to 2023 and also House assistant Democratic leader from 2011 to 2019 and again from 2023 to 2024. After the Democrats took control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections, Clyburn was reelected majority whip in January 2019 at the opening of the 116th Congress, alongside the reelected Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer, marking the second time the trio has served in these roles together.

In the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans gained control of the House, and Pelosi retired as leader of the House Democratic Caucus. In the 2022 United States House of Representatives Democratic Caucus leadership election, Clyburn successfully sought the position as House Assistant Democratic Leader, rather than that of Democratic Whip.

Clyburn played a pivotal role in the 2020 presidential election by endorsing Joe Biden three days before the South Carolina Democratic primary. His endorsement came at a time when Biden's campaign had suffered three disappointing finishes in the Iowa and Nevada caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Biden's South Carolina win three days before Super Tuesday transformed his campaign; the momentum led him to capture the Democratic nomination and later the presidency.

Clyburn was born in Sumter, South Carolina, the son of Enos Lloyd Clyburn, a fundamentalist minister, and his wife Almeta (née Dizzley), a beautician. A distant kinsman was George W. Murray, an organizer for the Colored Farmers Alliance (CFA), who was a Republican South Carolina Congressman in the 53rd and 54th U.S. Congresses in the late 19th century. He and other black politicians strongly opposed the 1895 state constitution, which essentially disenfranchised most African-American citizens, a situation the state maintained for more than half a century until federal civil rights legislation passed in the mid-1960s.

Clyburn graduated from Mather Academy (later named Boylan-Haven-Mather Academy) in Camden, South Carolina, then attended South Carolina State College (now South Carolina State University), a historically black college in Orangeburg. He joined the Omega Psi Phi fraternity and graduated with a baccalaureate in history.

In his first full-time position after college, Clyburn taught at C.A. Brown High School in Charleston, South Carolina.

Clyburn became involved in politics during the 1969 Charleston hospital strike. After assisting the settlement of the protests at the Medical University of South Carolina, he became involved in St. Julian Devine's campaign for a seat on the Charleston city council in 1969. Clyburn came up with the campaign's slogan, "Devine for Ward Nine". When Devine won the race, he became the first African American to hold a seat on the city council since Reconstruction. Clyburn later credited that campaign as the reason he got into electoral politics.