What is a validator compliant way of getting a double break without using <p> in XHTML/CSS?

I was finishing a website tonight (the first ive built from scratch using css primarily) and when i went to validate it i was getting errors which i understood but have now left me in a bind. The main group were where i had a vertical line of images being used as navigation buttons and i was seperating them individually with paragraph. When i validated however it appears that you cant use <p> with <a>. I therefore took out the p tags and used <br/> at the end of each line but now theyre too close together. I would use a double line break but i seem to recall that being quite bad practice.

Can anyone clear this up for me? Is there a CSS method that you use in this scenario instead?