A first measurement of the top quark mass in the decay channel t → (W → ℓν) (b → J/ψ + X → μ + μ − + X) is presented. The analysis uses events selected from the proton-proton collisions recorded by the CMS detector at the LHC at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb−1, with 666 $$ \mathrm{t}\overline{\mathrm{t}} $$ and single top quark candidate events containing a reconstructed J/ψ candidate decaying into an oppositely-charged muon pair. The mass of the (J/ψ + ℓ) system, where ℓ is an electron or a muon from W boson decay, is used to extract a top quark mass of 173.5 ± 3.0 (stat) ± 0.9 (syst) GeV.