diff --git a/jsonschema/compat.py b/jsonschema/compat.py
index 93492f9b4..1dacc55b6 100644
--- a/jsonschema/compat.py
+++ b/jsonschema/compat.py
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@
     from urllib.parse import (
         unquote, urljoin, urlunsplit, SplitResult, urlsplit as _urlsplit
     )
-    from urllib.request import pathname2url, urlopen
+    from urllib.request import pathname2url, url2pathname, urlopen
     str_types = str,
     int_types = int,
     iteritems = operator.methodcaller("items")
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@
     from urlparse import (
         urljoin, urlunsplit, SplitResult, urlsplit as _urlsplit # noqa
     )
-    from urllib import pathname2url, unquote  # noqa
+    from urllib import pathname2url, url2pathname, unquote  # noqa
     import urllib2  # noqa
     def urlopen(*args, **kwargs):
         return contextlib.closing(urllib2.urlopen(*args, **kwargs))
diff --git a/jsonschema/validators.py b/jsonschema/validators.py
index a49e125c6..a27402a00 100644
--- a/jsonschema/validators.py
+++ b/jsonschema/validators.py
@@ -25,6 +25,7 @@
     urljoin,
     urlopen,
     urlsplit,
+    url2pathname,
 )
 
 # Sigh. https://gitlab.com/pycqa/flake8/issues/280
@@ -818,6 +819,13 @@ def resolve_remote(self, uri):
 
         if scheme in self.handlers:
             result = self.handlers[scheme](uri)
+        elif scheme in [u"file", u""]:
+            # Resolve local files
+            path = uri
+            if path.startswith('file:'):
+                path = path[len('file:'):]
+            with open(url2pathname(path)) as _file:
+                result = json.load(_file)
         elif scheme in [u"http", u"https"] and requests:
             # Requests has support for detecting the correct encoding of
             # json over http