Henry William de Saussure was an American lawyer, state legislator and jurist from South Carolina who became a political leader as a member of the Federalist Party following the Revolutionary War.

He was appointed by President George Washington as the 2nd Director of the United States Mint, was a co-sponsor of the legislation that established the South Carolina College which was to become the University of South Carolina and was given the title of Chancellor as a justice of the SC Equity Court, also known as chancery court. In this capacity he wrote and codified much of the state's equity law still in use today. He served as Intendant (Mayor) of both Charleston and Columbia, SC.

He was a principal investor in founding what was originally intended to be the city's Federalist leaning newspaper, the Charleston Courier in 1803. The newspaper still exists today as it was eventually merged with others to become The Post and Courier. As a sitting appellate court judge, his opinions on a variety of issues were widely published under a pseudonym, which was the custom then for public officials who wished to express their views away from the bench. His opinions were highly critical of the summary abridgment of rights of the accused during the Denmark Vesey trials, purportedly in the name of public safety. He and others like him suspected there was less substance to the charges of a conspiracy to organize a slave revolt than the public in Charleston was being led to believe.

He openly opposed Nullification along with other leading South Carolinians. After the Federalist Party faded in the early 1820s, he was a voice for Unionist moderation before a rising tide States Rights supporters swept the stage of all others in South Carolina a generation later. Though deep political differences would eventually separate them, John C. Calhoun studied law in the offices of Henry de Saussure and Timothy Ford, his partner and brother-in-law. As a founder and early trustee of the University of South Carolina in Columbia, one of the original buildings located on the Horseshoe at the center of the campus, DeSaussure College, was named in his honor.

While in Philadelphia young de Saussure attended Princeton College and studied law under Jared Ingersoll, a noted Philadelphia attorney who would later be an active participant in the Constitutional Convention and a leading proponent of the Federalist Party. Before returning to Charleston, de Saussure married Elizabeth Ford, the daughter of Colonel Jacob Ford, Jr. and Theodosia Johnes Ford of Morristown, New Jersey. Henry and Elizabeth were married at her family's home in Morristown.