WASHINGTON — A retired four-star admiral who once was the Navy’s second-highest ranking officer was convicted of federal bribery and conspiracy charges in a scheme to direct lucrative contracts to a training company in exchange for a $500,000-a-year job.

Robert Burke, who served as the 40th vice chief of naval operations from June 2019 to June 2020, was found guilty Monday by a federal jury in Washington of single charges of bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery.

Burke is facing up to 30 years in prison for his role in a plan to direct contracts potentially worth millions of dollars to a New York City-based company that offered training programs to the Navy.

In return for his help, Burke was hired by the company, Next Jump, for $500,000 a year and was given lucrative stock options and other benefits after he left the Navy, the Justice Department said in a statement Monday.

Burke, who led naval forces in Europe and Africa from 2020 until his retirement in 2022, was also convicted of charges of performing acts affecting a personal financial interest and concealing material facts from the United States.

“When you abuse your position and betray the public trust to line your own pockets, it undermines the confidence in the government you represent,” U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro said following the five-day trial. “Our office, with our law enforcement partners, will root out corruption — be it bribes or illegal contracts — and hold accountable the perpetrators, no matter what title or rank they hold.”

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden set Burke’s sentencing for Aug. 22.

Burke’s attorney Timothy Parlatore described the verdict as a “miscarriage of justice,” adding that the prosecution intentionally withheld information from the jury and only presented them with sliver of the truth.

“This jury should have heard more. They should have heard a lot more. But we were prevented from showing the jury the full picture,” Parlatore told Stars and Stripes

Parlatore said jurors heard only three snippets of a more than two-hour interview Burke agreed to give to investigators in which he defended his conduct. The quotes, Parlatore said, were taken out of context and left the jury with a false impression of the conversation.

Parlatore sought to have the jury listen to the full interview, or at a minimum, additional parts of the interview to put those quotes into context, but the judge did not allow it.

Parlatore said he will appeal Burke’s conviction.

Burke is only the second Navy admiral ever convicted of a federal crime committed on active duty. The first was Adm. Robert Gilbeau, who was sentenced to 18 months in prison in May 2017 after admitting he lied in telling federal officials he had never received any gifts from a Malaysian businessman.

The businessman, known as “Fat Leonard,” was at the center of a massive bribery scandal involving Navy officers over a period of years.

In a trial brief filed days before Burke’s trial began, federal prosecutors said the defendant conspired with Yongchul “Charlie” Kim and Meghan Messenger, co-CEOs of Next Jump, to direct a $355,135 contract to the company for training programs in Rota, Spain and Naples, Italy, as part of a three-phase plan to garner more work with the Navy.

Burke subsequently wrote an admiral responsible for training sailors to promote Next Jump in the second phase of the plan. He also contacted a high-ranking official of a foreign military to promote the company, prosecutors said.

With the first two phases of the plan complete, Kim and Messenger offered Burke the job as outlined in a July 2021, lunch meeting in Washington, D.C. Burke went to work for Next Jump a few months after his retirement before resigning in January 2023, court records show.

Kim and Messenger each are facing separate counts of bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery, punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Their trial is set for Aug. 18.

In September, Judge McFadden granted the pair’s motion to be tried separately from Burke. The two claimed that they couldn’t get a fair trial alongside Burke because evidence used against him would likely sway a jury to convict them by association.

In a separate filing, Burke agreed to separate the cases, saying that Kim’s and Messenger’s planned defenses were fundamentally conflicting and irreconcilable to his own.

Burke maintained that he, Kim and Messenger didn’t do anything wrong, and that official discussions about a job with Next Jump did not happen until May 2022, well after the contract for training in Naples and Rota was completed. The Navy didn’t pursue additional training.

But in their July 19 motion for a separate trial, Kim and Messenger agreed with the government’s claim that the job offer was made during a July 23, 2021, lunch meeting, attended not only by Burke but also by a senior civilian Navy official.

Kim and Messenger argue that Burke knowingly misled them into believing that discussions about future employment were allowed, even while Burke supervised active contract negotiations with their company.