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Joe Bruno, the pugnacious former New York state senator who was recently indicted on eight counts of public corruption, shored up his legal team last week with McDermott Will & Emery’s Abbe Lowell.

Lowell is representing Bruno alongside William Dreyer of the Albany-based Dreyer Boyajian. Lowell, who also represents convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, is coming off a victory in another high-profile public corruption case. In November, the Justice Department dropped its long-running investigation into the affairs of Lowell’s client, Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, who was dogged by allegations that he steered millions of dollars in defense contracts to a software company in return for cash and cruises.

Bruno is accused of commingling his private business and his public office in undisclosed business arrangements with more than a dozen unions and other firms looking to do business with the state. Bruno, 79, who spent 32 years in the Senate, including 14 as majority leader, collected as much as $3.1 million through the deals, prosecutors allege. The indictment says Bruno deprived the public of his honest services by using his office for private gain from 1993 through at least December 2006.

Lowell says the charges represent “an unprecedented expansion of the ‘honest services’ theory that should trouble every part-time legislator because of its attempts to make criminal a person’s need to have an outside job. After 40 years of great public service, Sen. Bruno deserves a lot better than he received from the prosecutors.”