We present high resolution (R=50,000) spectra at 2.2 um of 16 young stars in the rho Ophiuchi dark cloud. Photospheric features are detected in the spectra of 11 of these sources, all Class II young stellar objects. In 10 of these sources, we measure effective temperatures, continuum veiling, and vsini rotation from the shapes and strengths of atomic photospheric lines by comparing to spectral synthesis models at 2.2 um. We measure surface gravities in 2 stars from the integrated line flux ratio of the 12CO line region at 2.3 um and the Na I line region at 2.2 um. Although the majority (8/10) of the Class II stars have similar effective temperatures (3530 K +/-100 K), they exhibit a large spread in bolometric luminosities (factor ~8), as derived from near-IR photometry. In the two stars where we have surface gravity measurements from spectroscopy, the photometrically derived luminosities are systematically higher than the spectroscopic luminosities. Our spectroscopic luminosities result in older ages on the H-R diagram than is suggested by photometry at J or K. Most of our sources show a substantially larger amount of continuum excess than stellar flux at 2.2 um. The derived veiling values at K appear correlated with mid-IR disk luminosity, and with Brackett gamma equivalent width, corrected for veiling. The derived vsini rotation is substantial (12-39 km s-1), but systematically less than the rotation measured in Class I.5 (flat) and Class I sources from other studies in Ophiuchus.