This paper proposes a local semi-analytical meshless method for simulating heat conduction in nonlinear functionally graded materials. The governing equation of heat conduction problem in nonlinear functionally graded material is first transformed to an anisotropic modified Helmholtz equation by using the Kirchhoff transformation. Then, the local knot method (LKM) is employed to approximate the solution of the transformed equation. After that, the solution of the original nonlinear equation can be obtained by the inverse Kirchhoff transformation. The LKM is a recently proposed meshless approach. As a local semi-analytical meshless approach, it uses the non-singular general solution as the basis function and has the merits of simplicity, high accuracy, and easy-to-program. Compared with the traditional boundary knot method, the present scheme avoids an ill-conditioned system of equations, and is more suitable for large-scale simulations associated with complicated structures. Three benchmark numerical examples are provided to confirm the accuracy and validity of the proposed approach.