Sir Kenneth Kennedy O'Connor KBE MC QC (21 December 1896 – 13 January 1985) was a soldier, lawyer and judge who served in the British Colonial Service.

O'Connor was born in Ranchi, then in the Chota Nagpur Division of the Bengal Presidency of British India. He was the second child of the Revd. William O'Connor and his wife Emma Kennedy. He was educated at the Abbey School, Beckenham, and Saint Columba's College, Dublin, a Church of Ireland boarding school, where he was a chorister and cricketer. From there, he won a choral scholarship to Worcester College, Oxford, but did not take it up, due to his military service during the First World War.

O'Connor had an older sister, Dorothy Georgina Noel O'Connor, who in 1921 was a teacher of modern languages at Wycombe Abbey in Buckinghamshire. By that year, their father was a widower.

O'Connor's father, born in Tuam and a graduate of the Royal University of Ireland, was ordained in 1891 into the Church of Ireland in Armagh. He was a curate at Carlingford, County Louth, then an SPG missionary at Ranchi, Chota Nagpur, from 1892 to 1900, returning home to take up the post of organising secretary of the SPG in Ireland from 1901 to 1913. He then returned to Ranchi until 1915, later holding a benefice in the Diocese of Oxford as Rector of Hedgerley, Buckinghamshire, before in 1929 retiring, having lost heart due to the poor attendance at his parish church. He went to live at Princes Risborough and died in December 1951, aged 89. He was reported to be "a courtly, scholarly clergyman of obvious sincerity".

In 1915, O'Connor joined the Cadet College, Quetta, as an Indian Army officer cadet, and from there on 29 June 1916 was commissioned onto the Unattached List. On 2 July 1916 he was attached to the 15th Ludhiana Sikhs, and on 29 June 1917 was promoted to Lieutenant in the 14th King George's Own Ferozepore Sikhs. In 1919, following an action in 1918 during the British campaign in Mesopotamia against the Ottomans, O'Connor was awarded the Military Cross

"...for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty at Mushaw on the 26th October 1918. Whilst boldly leading his men across a dry river bed swept by heavy fire he was knocked down by a partially spent bullet and struck by another, which wounded him in the leg. He at once picked himself up and continued to advance to the far side of the river bed, where loss of blood and exhaustion forced him to lie down. He continued to encourage his men and inspired them by his fine example."

O'Connor later wrote a short account of the Battle of Sharqat. After the war, he resigned his commission in the Indian Army, retiring with the rank of Captain. In 1919, he joined the Political Department of the Government of Mesopotamia, then in 1920 the Foreign and Political Department of the Government of India, serving until 1922. In December 1920, he was posted as the Assistant Commissioner in Hazara, a district of the North-West Frontier Province adjoining the Khyber Pass, and was later the District Commissioner in Charsadda.

In 1922, O'Connor took the life-changing decision to return to England to train as a barrister. He was admitted to Gray's Inn and was called to the London Bar in 1924. He practiced at the London bar for a few years, then went out to Singapore, where he worked as an advocate until 1941, becoming a partner in the firm of Drew & Napier. He was Chairman of the Straits Settlements Association in the late 1930s and played a key role in planning the civilian evacuation of the island in the event of a Japanese invasion. Having already sent his wife and children to Australia for their safety, before the arrival of the Japanese with three other men he escaped from Singapore in a small open sailing boat, with only a school atlas for navigation. Despite these limitations, the men successfully sailed to Sumatra. O'Connor later wrote a short account of this adventure, entitled Four Men in a Boat. By August 1942 he had joined his family in Adelaide.