D-arginine dehydrogenase from Pseudomonas aeruginosa catalyzes the oxidation of D-arginine to iminoarginine, which is hydrolyzed in solution to ketoarginine and ammonia. In the present study, we have genetically engineered an untagged form of the enzyme that was purified to high levels and characterized in its kinetic properties. The enzyme is a true dehydrogenase that does not react with molecular oxygen. Steady-state kinetic studies with D-arginine or D-histidine as substrate and PMS as the electron acceptor established a ping-pong bi-bi kinetic mechanism. With the fast substrate D-arginine a dead-end complex of the reduced enzyme and the substrate occurs at high concentrations of D-arginine yielding substrate inhibition, while the overall turnover is partially limited by the release of the iminoarginine product. With the slow substrate D-histidine the initial Michaelis complex undergoes an isomerization involving multiple conformations that are not all equally catalytically competent for the subsequent oxidation reaction, while the overall turnover is at least partially limited by flavin reduction. The kinetic data are interpreted in view of the high-resolution crystal structures of the iminoarginine--and iminohistidine--enzyme complexes.