James Richard O'Shaughnessy, Baron O'Shaughnessy is a British Conservative politician and member of the House of Lords. Of Irish extraction and educated in Berkshire at Claires Court School then Wellington College, O'Shaughnessy went up to St Hugh's College, Oxford to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics, graduating in 1998 as MA. A former Downing Street aide, he was Director of Policy to Prime Minister David Cameron from May 2010 to October 2011. Created a life peer on 1 October 2015, he took the title Baron O'Shaughnessy, of Maidenhead in the Royal County of Berkshire, before being appointed as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Care and as a Lord-in-Waiting (i.e. Government Whip in the House of Lords) on 21 December 2016. He resigned on 31 December 2018 due to "family circumstances." Lord O'Shaughnessy returned to government in 2019 being appointed by PM Boris Johnson.