John Sprunt Hill (March 17, 1869 – July 29, 1961) was a North Carolina lawyer, banker and philanthropist who played a fundamental role in the civic and social development of Durham, North Carolina, the expansion of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the development of rural credit unions in North Carolina during the first half of the 20th century.

Born in Faison, in Duplin County, North Carolina to William Edward Hill and Frances Diana Hill, John Sprunt Hill left school at age twelve, to work as a clerk in a country store for four years. He then attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and one of the co-founders of the Order of Gimghoul, and graduated maxima cum laude in 1889 with a Ph.B.

For two years, Hill taught at Faison High School, until he began attending law school at UNC in 1891. In 1892, he moved to New York City to complete his degree at Columbia University. Hill graduated from Columbia Law in 1894 and was admitted to the New York bar association and began practicing estate law, becoming a well-regarded and successful lawyer with his own firm, Hill, Sturcke & Andrews, by January 1895. In 1898, Hill volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army in the Spanish–American War, fighting in Puerto Rico.

Following the war, he returned to Manhattan, continuing his law practice and becoming involved with the Democratic Party. He joined and served as a leader in groups like the Reform Club and the Young Men's Democratic Club. In 1900, John Sprunt Hill ran, unsuccessfully, as a Democrat, for a seat in the United States House of Representatives, representing the heavily Republican 14th district of New York.

While attending Columbia, John Sprunt Hill met and became romantically involved with fellow-student Annie Louise Watts, daughter of North Carolina businessman George Washington Watts, who had co-founded the American Tobacco Company with James B. Duke. John Sprunt Hill married Watts, in New York, on November 29, 1899. In September 1903, shortly after the birth of their first child, George Watts Hill, John and Annie decided to relocate their family to Durham, to go into business with his father-in-law. He later inherited his father-in-law's house, Harwood Hall.

G.W. Watts and J.S. Hill became powerful partners in the burgeoning Bull City. Together, they founded the Home Savings Bank, where Hill served as president, and Durham Loan & Trust Company, where he served as chairman of the board, almost immediately upon Hill's arrival in Durham. From 1908 to 1910, J.S. Hill served as vice-president of Erwin Cotton Mills. In 1916, Watts and Hill founded the Home Security Life Insurance Company.

During the Great Depression, Watts and Hill reorganized the Durham Loan & Trust Company into the Durham Bank & Trust Company in 1931. In 1950, Home Savings Bank merged with the Durham Bank & Trust. In early 1961, Durham Bank & Trust merged with University National Bank of Chapel Hill to become Central Carolina Bank and Trust.

In 1913, Hill traveled to Europe in an effort to study rural credit systems that had sprung up there in response to widespread poverty. He returned to the United States intent on implementing a similar system at home. North Carolina of that time was more than 80% rural, and the economy farm-based, with a majority of residents living in poverty. He addressed farmers' organizations and congressional committees on the subject. Hill remarked that, "Credit union membership is a certificate of character and a badge of honor. Let a person stay in the credit union for ten years and it changes his whole philosophy of life—it is a modern miracle." Soon after passage of the North Carolina Credit Union Act on March 6, 1915, North Carolina's first credit union opened in 1916, in the southern Durham County community of Lowe's Grove. Twenty farmers in the Durham County community pooled $101.75, and the credit union movement was born. E. C. Branson, in a sketch published in 1918, called Hill the "Father of Rural Credit in North Carolina."