Dixon, James (d. c.1824), United Irishman, was a tanner at Kilmainham, a western suburb of Dublin, from c.1787, and was probably a son of James Dixon, a farmer there, and his wife, Mary Jane. He attended the Catholic Convention as a representative of Dungarvan, Co. Waterford (December 1792) but is not known to have any other connection with that town. He joined the Dublin Society of United Irishmen (7 December 1792), attended meetings regularly, acted once as chairman (26 July 1793), and served as treasurer (February 1794). After the United Irishmen formed themselves into a revolutionary body he was said by Samuel Turner (qv) to be a member of their national directory (early 1797) and by Francis Higgins (qv) to be their treasurer (March and October 1797). Dixon's name recurs frequently in contemporary documents relating to political unrest.
He is most notable as a wealthy, generous, dependable, and tireless host, throughout the 1790s and into the 1800s, to many dissidents and sympathisers, most significantly Francis Plowden (qv) and visitors to members of the society held in Kilmainham prison. He was himself twice arrested (March 1798 and 24 August 1803), and was one of eighteen former prisoners who in 1808 signed a protest concerning prison abuses. Charles Hamilton Teeling (qv) thought of him as ‘one of the most deservedly popular men in the city’. His name no longer appears in Wilson's Dublin Directory after 1824. This and other evidence suggests that he died about that year. He was buried beside the Round Tower at Lusk, Co. Dublin, having contributed nearly half of the £2,000 raised for the building of a catholic chapel in the parish in 1809. He was survived by his wife.