We derive a lower bound on the smallest singular value of a random $d$-regular matrix, that is, the adjacency matrix of a random $d$-regular directed graph. More precisely, let $C_1<d< c_1 n/\log^2 n$ and let $\mathcal{M}_{n,d}$ be the set of all $0/1$-valued square $n\times n$ matrices such that each row and each column of a matrix $M\in \mathcal{M}_{n,d}$ has exactly $d$ ones. Let $M$ be uniformly distributed on $\mathcal{M}_{n,d}$. Then the smallest singular value $s_{n} (M)$ of $M$ is greater than $c_2 n^{-6}$ with probability at least $1-C_2\log^2 d/\sqrt{d}$, where $c_1$, $c_2$, $C_1$, and $C_2$ are absolute positive constants independent of any other parameters.