U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-1st, has a new chief of staff.

Visclosky’s office confirmed today that long-time chief of staff Chuck Brimmer has retired.

Spokesman Jacob Ritvo declined to say, however, when Brimmer tendered his resignation or how long he worked in that capacity for Visclosky. “Out of respect for the process, I have no further comment,” he told the Chesterton Tribune.

Mark Lopez, who had served as district director in Visclosky’s Merrillville office, has been named the new chief of staff, Ritvo said.

Visclosky’s office made no general announcement of Brimmer’s retirement, Ritvo added. Instead, news of it surfaced after deadline on Tuesday as Visclosky spoke to regional newspapers about his decision to ask a colleague on the Energy and Water Subcommittee to assume responsibility for managing the construction of the Fiscal Year 2010 Energy and Water appropriations bill.

Visclosky, who chairs that subcommittee and would normally oversee that crafting of the appropriations bill, told the Tribune on Tuesday morning that he has asked U.S. Rep. Ed Pastor, D-Ariz.--and Pastor has agreed--to shepherd the bill in his place, after Visclosky concluded that he could become a lightning rod for “partisan political” attack were he to undertake the chair’s traditional role of managing the bill.

On Friday Visclosky announced that the Department of Justice last month served subpoenas, requesting documents related to The PMA Group, on his two campaign committees, on his congressional office in Washington, D.C., and Merrillville, and on certain employees whom he declined to name.

The FBI is reportedly investigating PMA, a now defunct Washington, D.C., lobbying firm which since 1989 specialized in obtaining lucrative government contracts or “earmarks” for its high-tech clients, many of them secured by Visclosky. PMA associates donated more than $150,000 to Visclosky’s campaign committees since 2001, while associates of PMA clients had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars more.

In February Visclosky announced that he would return $18,000 in contributions made over the last two election cycles by three men listed in Federal Election Commission records as PMA associates but who in fact appear to have had no true affiliation at all with PMA.

In March Visclosky confirmed media reports that a former chief of staff, Rich Kaelen--who worked for Visclosky over a seven-month period in 2003--was in the employ of PMA.

In April Visclosky announced that in the Fiscal Year 2010 appropriations bill he would seek no earmarks for any private for-profit entity. “There is a controversy that has attached to PMA, and I want to be focused on the problems we are trying to solve in Northwest Indiana,” the Associated Press quoted him at the time. “So this year, we are simply not going to request money for any for-profit firms, no matter who those requests come from.”