The optimal setting of directional overcurrent relays (DOCRs) ensures the fault detection and clearing in the minimum possible operation time. Directional protective relaying is carried out to coordinate relay settings in a meshed network in the presence of distributed generation. The main goal of DOCR coordination is to find the optimal time dial setting (TDS) and pickup multiplier setting (PMS) to reach the minimum total operation time of all primary relays in the presence of coordination constraints. Due to the complexity of mixed integer non-linear programming (MINLP) problem, imperialistic competition algorithm (ICA) as a powerful evolutionary algorithm is used to solve the coordination problem of DOCRs. The proposed DOCR coordination formulation is implemented in three different test cases. The results are compared with the standard branch-and-bound algorithm and other meta-heuristic optimization algorithms, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.