Robert L. Bradley, Jr., (born June 17, 1955) is president of the Institute for Energy Research in Houston, Texas; an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.; and a visiting fellow of the Institute for Economic Affairs in London. Bradley has a Ph.D. in political economy and has held the position of senior research fellow at both the University of Houston and the University of Texas at Austin. He was formerly Director for Public Policy Analysis at Enron (and speechwriter for Kenneth Lay).

Bradley is the author of five books on energy history and policy, including Oil, Gas, and Government: The U.S. Experience (2 vols.: 1998), which has been called "a landmark in regulatory studies," and (with Richard Fulmer) Energy: The Master Resource (2004), which Milton Friedman described as a "splendid" book that "effectively debunks the widespread predictions of energy doom." Bradley is currently writing Political Capitalism: Insull, Enron & Beyond, a multi-faceted history and business best-practices book whose narrative climaxes with the rise and fall of Enron.