Gamaliel the Elder or Rabban Gamaliel I is a leading authority in the Sanhedrin in the mid 1st century CE.

He is the son of Simeon ben Hillel, and grandson of the great Jewish teacher Hillel the Elder, and dies twenty years before the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem (70 CE).

He fathers a son, whom he calls Simeon, after his father, and a daughter, whose daughter (i.e., Gamaliel's granddaughter) marries a priest named Simon ben Nathanael.

The name Gamaliel is the Greek form of the Hebrew name meaning reward of God.

In the Christian tradition, Gamaliel is celebrated as a Pharisee doctor of Jewish Law.

Acts of the Apostles speaks of Gamaliel as a man of great respect who spoke in favor of arrested Christian apostles and the Jewish Law teacher of Paul the Apostle.