James H. Birch (fl. 1841) was an American slave trader, tried for kidnapping but acquitted in the District of Columbia. Birch was responsible for the kidnapping and selling of Solomon Northup, a free man, in Washington in 1841. Northup wrote a memoir of his time as a slave, Twelve Years a Slave. Birch later presided over Alexandria’s largest slave pen at 1315 Duke St, operating as Price, Birch and Co. The building is now Freedom House Museum (in Alexandria, Virginia).