Austin Agrella

Austin is a Principal at The Aquia Group. He joins the firm after nearly a decade of government service at the highest levels of Congress and the Executive Branch, where he helped shape decisions on many of the most important issues facing the nation.

Prior to joining Aquia Group, Austin was the Director of Oversight, Parliamentarian, and Senior Advisor to the House Appropriations Committee, where he helped craft and shepherd the Committee’s 12 annual appropriations bills into law and, prior to that role, was responsible for overseeing roughly $21 billion in spending across many technology-related accounts.

Austin has also served as the Staff Director for the Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection and Innovation Subcommittee on the House Committee on Homeland Security, where he led the Committee’s bipartisan work on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence and helped craft the first industry-wide national cyber incident reporting law, and many others.  

In the Executive Branch, Austin served as a Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Cabinet Secretary for Policy, where he helped manage government-wide responses to some of the most pressing challenges facing the country by serving as a conduit between all 23 Executive Departments and Agencies and the White House.  Austin also served as the Legislative Liaison for National Telecommunications Information Agency (NTIA) at the Department of Commerce.

In the Office of Representative Will Hurd, Austin served as Legislative Director and led all artificial intelligence, technology, cybersecurity, energy, and appropriations issues and was awarded the Federal 100 award in 2018 for his work drafting and passing the Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act which created the Tech Modernization Fund (TMF).

Austin has a degree from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, where he ran track and worked on several local and federal campaigns.