Recent studies suggested that nocturnal variations of blood pressure (BP) were closely related to type 2 diabetes. However, little information has been revealed about the relationship between reverse-dipper pattern of BP and type 2 diabetes. In this cross-sectional study, BP variations of 531 hypertensive patients were evaluated with ambulatory BP monitoring (ABPM). Diagnosis of diabetes in Chinese adults was made according to diabetes diagnostic criteria of 2015. Multivariate logistic regression was used to examine the relationships between type 2 diabetes and ABPM results. In the study, patients with reverse-dipper pattern (32.3%) had the highest prevalence of type 2 diabetes compared with dippers (21.4%) and nondippers (23.3%). After multivariate logistic regression, reverse-dipper BP pattern (OR 2.067, P = 0.024) and nondipper BP pattern (OR 1.637, P = 0.039) were found to be correlated with type 2 diabetes compared with dipper pattern. The results of our study also suggested that type 2 diabetes might contribute to the reverse-dipper pattern of BP (OR 1.691, P = 0.023). In addition, fasting glucose was negatively correlated with the decline rate of nocturnal SBP (r = -0.095, P = 0.029). Reverse-dipper pattern of BP in ABPM may be independently associated with type 2 diabetes in patients with hypertension.