Charles D. Swift (born 1961) is an American attorney and former career Navy officer, who retired in 2007 as a Lieutenant Commander in the Judge Advocate General's Corps.

He is most noted for having served as defense counsel for Salim Ahmed Hamdan,[1] a detainee from Yemen who was the first to be charged at Guantanamo Bay; Swift took his case to the US Supreme Court.

After several years, he was approved to attend law school and, after graduation, in 1994 became a member of the Navy's legal corps.

In June 2006, Swift learned he had been "passed over" by the Navy (a second time) for promotion; as a result, under the military's "up or out" system, he had to retire in the spring of 2007.

In October 2012, Hamdan was acquitted of all charges in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

In 1991, he left active service to attend Seattle University School of Law, as authorized by the Navy, where he graduated cum laude.

A comprehensive biography can be found here [5] (website for the Association of Graduates of the United States Military Academy, different from LCDR Swift's commissioning source).

Summary of LCDR Swift's assignments: The US Navy lawyer successfully represented the plaintiff Guantanamo detainee in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006) and took his case to the US Supreme Court.

Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, was captured during the US invasion of Afghanistan, and held from 2002 at Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

The Deputy Judge Advocate General of the Air Force, Charles J. Dunlap Jr., later said that suggestion was without evidence.