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 Captain
Robert “Rob” A. Sanders,
JAGC, USN was an
outstanding student-athlete
at Mont Pleasant High
School. He was co-captain
of the 1977 Mont Pleasant
football team, student
representative to the school
district board of education,
received the 1977 Dave Boyd
Scholar-Athlete award and
was the recipient of the
General Electric engineering
scholarship. After
graduating from Mont
Pleasant in 1977, Sanders
attended Northeastern
University in Massachusetts
where he was a leader among
the Black Engineering
Students Society. He was a
member of the Beta Alpha
Chapter of the Phi Beta
Sigma fraternity and a
member of the track team.
Sanders graduated from
Northeastern University with
a Bachelors of Science in
Electrical Engineering in
1983.
Prior to his commissioning,
Sanders embarked on an
engineering career. He
worked for Vitro
Corporation, where he worked
on programming and
development of shipboard
missile systems. This is
also where he become
connected and interested in
the Navy.
Sanders entered the Navy
through Recruit Basic
Training Center, Great
Lakes, where he helped lead
the top company of his
Recruit class and became an
Intelligence Specialist in
the Navy Reserve. In 1988,
Sanders earned a law degree
from the Catholic University
of America in Washington
D.C. While there, he held
many impressive internship
positions including with the
Navy Office of General
Council’s Space and Naval
Warfare Systems Command.
Upon graduation, Sanders
went into active duty and
dedicated more than two
decades of service with the
Office of the Navy Judge
Advocate General (JAG).
Sanders held numerous
influential positions as a
JAG officer. He has served
all over the world and
helped developing nations
craft their military law.
As a legal mentor, Sanders
worked with the Afghan army
and civilian institutions to
help design the Afghan
National Army’s military
justice system. He was
instrumental in helping to
produce a system that
included a three-tiered
court system, a criminal
investigative agency and a
robust body of regulations
governing punitive articles,
court-martialed procedure,
non-judicial punishment,
ethics and armed conflict of
war.
Sanders is one of only three
African American JAG
Captains in the U.S. Navy
and has earned a myriad of
awards including the Navy’s
2009 NAACP Roy Wilkins
Meritorious Service Award,
the Joint Service
Commendation Medal, The
National Defense Service
Medal, and The Afghan
Service Campaign Medal to
name a few.
Sanders influenced world
justice in the spirit of
human rights, culture and
government. He has become a
role model who illustrates
perseverance, academics and
self-confidence. Sanders
urges youth “to devote time
to academics and to realize
the world moves much
differently from how it’s
sometimes portrayed by urban
culture icons.”
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