He was also the presiding judge at the Guantanamo military commission where he notably oversaw the trial of Salim Hamdan.

Allred entered the navy in 1979 after completing a Bachelor of Arts degree with high honors at Brigham Young University.

Initially assigned as a surface warfare officer, he served three years at sea aboard the destroyers USS Oldendorf (DD-972) and USS Towers (DDG-9), qualifying as a command duty officer, officer of the deck at sea, and navigator, with much of his initial assignment forward deployed to the US Seventh Fleet, operating from the United States Fleet Activities Yokosuka base in Yokosuka, Japan, westward to the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf.

On June 4, 2007, Allred dismissed all charges against Salim Ahmed Hamdan.

[2][4] Allred, and Peter Brownback, the officer presiding over Omar Khadr's Tribunal, ruled that the since the Act only authorized the Commissions to try "unlawful enemy combatants", and that Hamdan and Khadr's Combatant Status Review Tribunals had merely confirmed that the captives were "enemy combatants", the Commissions lacked jurisdiction.