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John Pistole, retired president of Anderson University and a former longtime leader at the Transportation Security Administration and FBI, has joined Noblesville-based law firm Church Church Hittle + Antrim as a senior adviser in the firm’s Higher Education Practice Group.
In a news release, the firm said Pistole’s appointment marks a notable milestone in the firm’s commitment to serving more than 75 higher education institutions across the country.
In 2024, Pistole announced his retirement from Anderson for the end of the 2024-2025 school year. Around that time, an attorney with CCHA reached out to ask him about associating with the firm.
“The fact that I’d started off as a lawyer, practiced for a couple of years in Anderson, where I grew up, before going off and doing other things for 31 years and then 10 years with the university, I just thought that would be a nice bookend,” Pistole said in written remarks about accepting the firm’s offer.
At CCHA, Pistole will support the Higher Education Practice Group through insights on the needs of small colleges and universities, facilitating conversations with leaders and providing seminars and training to support the schools’ operations.
Before his hiring, Pistole had served as president at Anderson since 2015.
Prior to that, he served as administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, acting as the longest-serving administrator in the agency’s history. In that role, he oversaw security operations across more than 450 airports nationwide.
Pistole also spent 26 years with the FBI. In that role, he served as deputy director and helped shape United States counterterrorism strategy after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, according to the firm.
He said that in this new role, he’s most looking forward to helping others face challenges in the higher education sphere and believes his experience at Anderson and with the FBI and TSA will help him do so.
Pistole said hopes he “can help them avoid some of the pitfalls and to mitigate risks and how to go about their day-to-day business.”
He is a graduate of Anderson University and earned his law degree from the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law.
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