This technical note investigates the sliding mode control (SMC) design based on finite-time boundedness (FTB) for a class of nonlinear systems. A suitable SMC law is constructed to drive the state trajectories onto the specified sliding surface during a specified finite (possibly short) time interval. Besides, by introducing a partitioning strategy, the corresponding FTB over reaching phase and sliding motion phase are guaranteed, respectively. And then, the sufficient conditions are derived to ensure the FTB of the closed-loop systems over the whole finite-time interval. Finally, a simulation example is given to show the effectiveness of the proposed design method.