After fitting out, she departed Boston loaded torpedoes and spare parts at Newport, Rhode Island, and embarked upon her shakedown cruise to Key West and Cuban waters.

In August, she made a voyage to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with Naval Academy midshipmen embarked, returning them to Annapolis, Maryland, on the 22nd.

Worden stopped briefly at Hampton Roads, then headed via New York to Boston for repairs at the navy yard which she completed early in November.

On 29 May of that year, she got underway for a voyage which took her up the coast to Philadelphia; thence to Yorktown, Virginia, a temporary base for battle practice and gunnery drills.

During August, September, and October, she conducted battle practice off the capes, departing the area periodically for visits to New York; Beaufort, North Carolina; and Newport.

On 5 January, she arrived at Lynnhaven Roads, Virginia, but, soon thereafter, continued south to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where she resumed gun and torpedo drills through the end of the month.

After visits to several gulf coast ports (Galveston, Texas, New Orleans, Louisiana, Tampa, Florida and Key West) she returned to Newport on 15 May.

Her tour in the Adriatic was probably influenced by the murder of two Americans in the newly established state of Albania and the internal strife which followed and which resulted in the ousting of prime minister Ahmed Zogu and his temporary replacement by a provisional government under Fan S. Noli.

Later in the year, the destroyer left the Mediterranean for visits to Gravesend, England, Cherbourg, France, Leith, Scotland and Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

On the 7th, she headed south to join in the annual winter maneuvers held in the West Indies and in Panama Bay on the Pacific side of the isthmus.

In March, Worden returned to the Caribbean with Scouting Fleet and resumed battle practice, gunnery drills, and torpedo exercises in the West Indies.

The warship bade farewell to Philadelphia once again on 5 January 1927 and pointed her bow southward for a stop at Yorktown followed by the 1927 edition of the annual winter maneuvers.

In January 1929, she moved to Norfolk for repairs to her turbines; and, after post-repair trials in the Chesapeake Bay in February, she headed south for winter maneuvers.

Her name was struck from the Navy list on 22 October 1930, and she was sold for scrapping on 17 January 1931 according to the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.