James Robert McClelland (3 June 1915 – 16 January 1999) was an Australian lawyer, politician, and judge. He was a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and served as a Senator for New South Wales from 1971 to 1978. He briefly held ministerial office in the Whitlam government in 1975 as Minister for Manufacturing Industry and Minister for Labor and Immigration. He later served as the inaugural Chief Judge of the Land and Environment Court of New South Wales from 1980 to 1985, as well as presiding over the 1984 McClelland Royal Commission into British nuclear tests in Australia.
Early life
McClelland was born in Melbourne on 3 June 1915. He was the son of Florence Ruby (née O'Connor) and Robert William McClelland. His father, of Ulster Scots descent, was a painter, paperhanger and signwriter with the Victorian Railways.
McClelland spent his early years in the Melbourne suburb of Glen Iris. In 1925 his father was transferred to Ballarat, where he attended St Patrick's College, Ballarat. He completed his secondary education on a scholarship at St Kevin's College, Melbourne, where he was a classmate of B. A. Santamaria. He resigned from the Senate on 21 July 1978.
Later life
In 1980 McClelland was appointed the first chief judge of the Land and Environment Court of NSW, holding that office until his 70th birthday in June 1985.
In 1984, as Justice McClelland, he was President of the Royal Commission into British nuclear tests in Australia at Maralinga.
He was reviled by the right as is indicated in Roddy Meagher's portrait in Quadrant, and associated with Edmund Campion, Patrick White, Manning Clark and Donald Horne.
Personal life
In 1947, McClelland married Nora Fitzer, a Harbin Russian of Jewish descent. The couple adopted two children together, one of whom predeceased him. They divorced in 1968 and in the same year he remarried to Freda Watson, who had three young children from a previous marriage. They settled in Darling Point where they were friends of author Patrick White. McClelland was widowed in 1976 and in 1978 married writer Gillian Appleton.