Django: Is there a way to keep the dev server from restarting when a local .py file is changed and dynamically loaded?

If you run the development server using --noreload parameter it will not auto reload the changes:

python manage.py runserver --noreload

Disables the auto-reloader. This means any Python code changes you make while the server is running will not take effect if the particular Python modules have already been loaded into memory.