You can do this from the IPython API.
from IPython.nbformat import current as nbformat
from IPython.nbconvert import PythonExporter
filepath = 'path/to/my_notebook.ipynb'
export_path = 'path/to/my_notebook.py'
with open(filepath) as fh:
nb = nbformat.reads_json(fh.read())
exporter = PythonExporter()
# source is a tuple of python source code
# meta contains metadata
source, meta = exporter.from_notebook_node(nb)
with open(export_path, 'w+') as fh:
fh.writelines(source)