William Shepard Bryan (November 20, 1827 – December 9, 1906)^[1][2] was a Maryland lawyer who served as a justice of the Maryland Court of Appeals from 1883 to 1898.^[3]

Born in New Bern, North Carolina, he was the son of Congressman John Heritage Bryan.^[4] Bryan "received his early general and education in the South".^[2] He graduated from the University of North Carolina and read law under the supervision of his father.^[4] He moved to Baltimore in 1850, and read law to gain admission to the bar in Maryland in 1851, thereafter entering the practice of law.^[4][2] He was a southern sympathizer during the American Civil War,^[2] and was a presidential elector in the 1876 United States presidential election.^[2]

In 1883, Bryan was elected as a Democrat to the Baltimore seat on the Court of Appeals vacated by the resignation of Judge James Lawrence Bartol.^[4] As the only judge with no circuit duties to perform, he "delivered the opinion of the court in a large number of cases, many of them being of great importance and public interest".^[4] He retired from the court in 1898.^[1]

On October 1, 1857, Bryan married Elizabeth "Lizzie" Edmondson Hayward of Talbot County, Maryland, with whom he had a daughter and three sons.^[1][2] Bryan's wife died in 1898.^[1][2] Bryan himself died of liver cancer eight years later, at the age of 79,^[2] at the home of his son, William Shepard Jr., who was then attorney general of the state.^[1] He was interred in Baltimore's Green Mount Cemetery.^[2]