James Traub (born 1954) is an American journalist. He is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, where he has worked since 1998. From 1994 to 1997, he was a staff writer for The New Yorker. He has also written for The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic Monthly, National Review and Foreign Affairs. He is a senior fellow at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University and also teaches at the university. He taught at the Maulana Azad College in Aurangabad, India. He was also a reporter for the New York Post and a senior editor of the Saturday Review.