Jean Valjean is a fictional character and the protagonist of Victor Hugo's 1862 novel Les Misérables. Hugo depicts the character's 19-year-long struggle to lead a normal life after serving a prison sentence for stealing bread to feed his sister's children during a time of economic depression and various attempts to escape from prison. Valjean is also known in the novel as Monsieur Madeleine, Ultime Fauchelevent, Monsieur Leblanc, and Urbain Fabre; the libretto mentions he is Prisoner 24601. Unlike the others, Monsieur Leblanc is not an alias that Valjean uses but a nickname given to him by Marius because of his white hair.

Valjean and Police Inspector Javert, who repeatedly encounters Valjean and attempts to return him to prison, have become archetypes in literary culture. In the popular imagination, the character of Jean Valjean came to represent both Hugo himself and leftist sentiment. In 1871, when Hugo was living in Brussels during the radical revolt known as the Paris Commune, anti-revolutionary mobs attacked his house and broke windows shouting "Down with Jean Valjean!"

Valjean Johns (November 19, 1934 - February 10, 2003), who typically recorded under his first name only, was an American pianist best known for his recording of the theme song from the TV show Ben Casey.

Born in Shattuck, Oklahoma, Valjean studied music at the University of Oklahoma, graduating in 1958 and attaining a Fulbright scholarship. In 1962, he released a recording of David Raksin's "Theme from Ben Casey", which hit #28 on the Billboard Hot 100. That same year, he released a full-length album, also titled Theme from Ben Casey, which peaked at #113 on the Billboard 200. He also scored the 1969 counterculture thriller The Big Cube, which starred Lana Turner.

Valjean also toured, making appearances with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the Tulsa Philharmonic Orchestra among others.

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