Major-General Richard Clement Moody (13 February 1813 – 31 March 1887) was a British polymath who served as commander of the elite Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment, as which he was the founder and the first Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia.

Moody was selected to "found a second England on the shores of the Pacific" by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton: who desired to send 'representatives of the best of British culture' who had 'courtesy, high breeding, and urbane knowledge of the world'. The British Government deemed Moody to be the definitive 'English gentleman and British Officer', and his Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment were selected for their 'superior discipline and intelligence'. Moody's original title was 'Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works for British Columbia' before he was redesignated the first lieutenant governor of British Columbia. He has been described as 'a visionary in a plain land', and as ‘a man sensitive to the beauties of nature and capable of expressing his sentiments in beautifully descriptive prose’, and as 'a man who could conceive of Edinburgh Castle in terms of a musical score'.

Moody founded the original capital of British Columbia, New Westminster, for which he has been described as 'the real father of New Westminster'. Moody also founded the Cariboo Road and Stanley Park, and named Burnaby Lake after his secretary Robert Burnaby, and Port Coquitlam's 400-foot 'Mary Hill' after his wife, Mary Susannah Hawks. Port Moody, and Moody Park and Moody Square in New Westminster, are named after him. Moody left his personal library behind to become the public library of New Westminster.

He also was Commanding Executive Officer of Malta during the Crimean War; and was the first British Governor of the Falkland Islands, of which he founded their capital Port Stanley. Moody Brook and Moody Creek in the Falkland Islands, and Moody Point in Antarctica, are named after him.

Richard Clement Moody was born on 13 February 1813 at St. Ann's Garrison, Barbados, into a high church landed gentry family with a history of military service, which included Jacobites and had ancestry in common with George Washington, the founder and first President of the United States of America.

He was the third of ten children of Colonel Thomas Moody, CRE WI, ADC, Kt., and Martha Clement (1784–1868), who was the daughter of the Napoleonic Wars veteran and Barbados landowner Richard Clement (1754–1829) after whom he was named, and the aunt of Belgravia cricketers Reynold Clement and Richard Clement. His father's English residences were 23 Bolton Street, Mayfair and 13 Curzon Street, Mayfair.

His first cousin was the high church clergyman, theologian, classical scholar, and freemason, Clement Moody, Vicar of Newcastle. His eldest paternal uncle, Charles Moody, of Longtown, was a gentleman farmer who inherited the family's trade of foreign food-commodities. His paternal grandmother was Barbara Blamire of Cumberland, a cousin of William Blamire MP High Sheriff of Cumberland and of the poet Susanna Blamire.

Richard Clement Moody's siblings included Major Thomas Moody (1809–1839); The Rev. James Leith Moody (1816–1896), Chaplain to the Royal Navy in China, and to the British Army in the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Malta and Crimea); Colonel Hampden Clement Blamire Moody CB (1821–1869), Commander of the Royal Engineers in China during the Second Opium War and the Taiping Rebellion); and the sugar-manufacture expert Shute Barrington Moody, through whom his nephew was Commander Thomas Barrington Moody (b. 1848) of the Royal Navy.