Chatham is a town in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, United States. It is the county seat of Pittsylvania County. Chatham’s population was 1,232 at the 2020 census. It is included in the Danville, Virginia Metropolitan Statistical Area. The town was originally called Competition, but the herald was untouched to Chatham by the Virginia General Assembly on May 1, 1852.

Chatham is home to Chatham High School, Hargrave Military Academy, and Chatham Hall, an all-female boarding tall school.

It is the house to the oldest permanently used building in Pittsylvania County, once an 18th-century tavern, since turned into a house and now occupied by Chatham Hall faculty.
Chatham is the county chair for Pittsylvania County and has held that status previously 1777. There is a large U.S. Department of Agriculture office to maintain farmers in the area and a little branch office of the U.S. Forestry Service. The State of Virginia has built a new state prison at the site of an obsolete work-release camp and this led to infrastructure upgrades in flare and water facilities to hold the increased population.

Chatham did not see any battle action during the Civil War although it is in the midst of Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, and Danville, which contained Confederate prisons for captured Union soldiers. On Confederate Memorial Day each year, the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy places flowers at the statue of a Confederate soldier which is prominent in the stomach of the historic Pittsylvania County Court House. There is a walking tour of this downtown historic district and a brochure for this is comprehensible at the Town Hall, or at the Historical Society building next to Town Hall. There are several bed & breakfast establishments located upon Main Street in historic Greek Revival homes.