The tripartite motif (TRIM) protein family is recently discovered genes that are involved in multiple biological processes including restricting viral infections and regulating host cellular innate response in animal tissues. In this study, a TRIM gene (TRIM56) was cloned, sequenced and characterized from Banna mini-pig inbred line (BMI) (GenBank accession numbers for the nucleotide sequences is KJ881160). The coding sequence (CDS) of the porcine TRIM56 consists of 2268 bp which encodes 755 amino acids with molecular weights of 81.52 kDa and a pI of 8.04. The putative protein of TRIM56, which is located in the nuclear with 55.5% probability, contains two conserved domains namely RING and BBOX, a coiled-coil motif and no signal peptide. Multiple alignments based on the TRIM56 amino acid sequences showed BMI TRIM56 protein had 92.6%, 91.9%, 88.1%, 82.3%, 87.5% identity with that of cattle, horse, human, mouse and rhesus monkey. The phylogenetic analysis revealed BMI TRIM56 had a closer genetic relationship with cattle than other four species. And three predicted microRNA target sites were found in the CDSs of porcine TRIM56. The tissue expression analyses revealed that the BMI TRIM56 was only expressed in the heart, lung, liver, thymus, brain, cerebellum, testis, epididymis, seminal vesicle, prostate and bulbourethral gland. Among these tissues, the thymus, brain and seminal vesicle demonstrated a high expression levels. These data provide the primary foundation for further insights into the porcine TRIM56 gene.