James Camp Tappan (September 9, 1825 – March 19, 1906) was a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. James C. Tappan was born in Franklin, Tennessee, where his parents had migrated from Newburyport, Massachusetts. Tappan attended Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, and graduated from Yale University in 1845. Tappan studied law at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and was admitted to the bar in 1846. Tappan soon moved to Helena in Phillips County, Arkansas. He was elected to two terms in the Arkansas legislature and served as a circuit court judge.