Robert E. Coughlin

Robert E. Coughlin, II, is an American lawyer and was formerly the Deputy Chief of Staff, Criminal Division, of the United States Department of Justice. He was convicted in the aftermath of the Abramoff scandal.

Coughlin resigned from the Department of Justice 6 April 2007. A media report linked Coughlin's resignation to his friendship with Kevin A. Ring, who in turn has been linked in media reports to the Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal. Coughlin's position in the Department of Justice placed him high in the chain of supervision of the staff investigating the scandal.

He pleaded guilty to conflict of interest on April 22, 2008. According to his plea, Kevin Ring took Coughlin out to meals 25 times, mostly at Abramoff's Signatures Restaurant. Ring gave Coughlin 20 tickets to Abramoff's skyboxes on seven occasions to Washington Wizards and Washington Redskins games, as well as five tickets to three concerts and one round of golf while helping Kevin A. Ring and his clients. In exchange for these gifts, worth $4,800 to $6,180, Coughlin helped Ring and Abramoff get a $16.3 million grant from the Justice Department to build a jail for Abramoff's client, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.

In November 2009, he was sentenced to a month in a halfway house, three years of probation and a $2,000 fine.