Dr. James Delamere Lafferty was a doctor and politician. He was born in Ontario around 1853 and died in 1920. In 1890, he served one term as the fifth mayor of the town of Calgary, Alberta.

Lafferty graduated from Queen's University in 1871. Dr. Lafferty first practised medicine in Ontario before moving to Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1881. He then moved on to Calgary in 1885. He acted as the first president of the Alberta College of Physicians and Surgeons and Chief Surgeon for the Canadian Pacific Railway.

He ran for the Liberal Party in the Alberta riding of the 1887 Canadian federal election, but lost out to Conservative Donald Watson Davis.