Venable has announced the addition of Ret. Rear Admiral and Former Chief of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) James Arden Barnett as a partner in its Washington, DC, office.

Barnett, who was most recently the senior vice president of national security policy at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, becomes co-chair of Venable’s Telecommunications Group alongside Frederick Joyce.

At the FCC, Barnett created the Cybersecurity and Communications Reliability Division, which established three major security measures for Internet service providers.