Check out strptime in the time module. It is the inverse of strftime.
$ python
>>> import time
>>> time.strptime('Jun 1 2005 1:33PM', '%b %d %Y %I:%M%p')
time.struct_time(tm_year=2005, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=1,
tm_hour=13, tm_min=33, tm_sec=0,
tm_wday=2, tm_yday=152, tm_isdst=-1)