WASHINGTON — A Tewksbury motel owner who successfully fought the federal government’s four-year effort to seize his property urged Washington lawmakers yesterday to reform the law — and found a powerful ally in a GOP presidential candidate.

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) blasted federal civil forfeiture laws, which allow the feds to seize property associated with alleged criminal activity and place the burden on the property owner to prove that the seized goods are not the product of criminal enterprise.

“Civil forfeiture turns justice on its head,” Paul told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Our current laws presume you are guilty until you can prove your innocence. This is directly in contradiction to what we should stand for as a republic.”

Paul also blasted attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch, whose confirmation has stalled in the Senate, accusing her of abusing the civil forfeiture program during her tenure as a New York U.S. attorney in order to boost revenue.

During her confirmation hearing, Lynch called the civil and criminal forfeiture programs “very important tools of the Department of Justice as well as our state and local counter­parts,” pointing out that they are used in part for crime victim restitution.

But Russ Caswell, who owned the Motel Caswell in Tewksbury when the federal government seized the property in 2009 over drug busts involving motel guests, told lawmakers he was targeted over other establishments with much larger crime problems because he owned his property outright — making the seizure more lucrative for the government.

“Our commercially zoned property with no mortgage put a bull’s-eye on our backs in the eyes of the government,” Caswell testified.

Caswell said he and his ailing wife had to tap their retirement savings to hire attorneys to fight the action, and they successfully won their case in 2013. They sold the motel last year for $2.1 million, he said.

Paul urged the panel­ to advance a bill he co-sponsored, the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration (FAIR) Act, which would, among other things, raise the burden of proof in forfeiture cases and require a criminal conviction before property is seized.