Vaughn’s career traces the full arc of federal litigation. His connection to the U.S. Naval Academy — where he would later serve as Deputy General Counsel — began as a midshipman. After earning his law degree from Boston University School of Law, he was admitted to the Florida Bar in 2002 and commissioned into the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps, serving more than two decades on active and reserve duty. He rose from front-line defense and prosecution work to a range of supervisory and leadership roles, including Deputy Chief of a legal command spanning three continents; taught at the Naval Justice School and Naval War College; and served as an ad hoc military magistrate. From 2013 to 2022, with the Office of Military Commissions, he served as lead litigation attorney in United States v. Abd al Hadi al-Iraqi, the war-crimes prosecution of al Qaeda’s senior military commander. He capped his government service as a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice before retiring from federal service and joining the Dhillon Law Group.

Vaughn has first-chaired more than 1,000 cases — trying 26 of them to a jury — and has litigated thousands of motions spanning complex international, constitutional, procedural, evidentiary, and national-security issues. He has also presided over 22 preliminary hearings on charges up to attempted murder. As lead litigation attorney in United States v. al-Iraqi, he was responsible for the in-court presentation of the majority of issues before the military commission. He personally reviewed more than 100,000 pages of classified electronically stored information — part of a discovery record exceeding a million pages — coordinated with more than a dozen federal agencies including the CIA, FBI, and NSA, obtained Attorney General authorization to use FISA-derived materials, and interfaced with foreign governments to secure evidence and witnesses. At the Department of Justice, he represented federal agencies in the U.S. Courts of Appeals and district courts, resolving nearly 500 civil suits through motions practice and settlement, and negotiating protective orders and ESI protocols governing complex electronic discovery. He has managed multidisciplinary teams of attorneys, analysts, and paralegals; prepared expert witnesses for trial and counseled clients through high-profile government investigations and congressional matters, including drafting legislation enacted by Congress and, as sole counsel, preparing a client for testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee and defeating the committee’s attempt to subpoena him; advised senior government leadership on ethics, contracts, labor and employment, and intellectual property; and is an early and active adopter of technology and artificial-intelligence tools in litigation and legal operations.

• Juris Doctor, Boston University School of Law (2001)
• Bachelor of Science, State University of New York at Albany (1998)
• United States Naval Academy, Class of 1998 (Medically discharged 1996)

• Complex Civil and Commercial Litigation
• Trial and Appellate Practice
• Labor and Employment
• Government Investigations and National Security
• Congressional Investigations and Testimony
• eDiscovery and Complex Discovery (ESI)
• Administrative, Regulatory, and Compliance
• International Law

• The Florida Bar (2002)
• Supreme Court of the United States (2017)