The Houston Chronicle is out with a profile of San Diego attorney Michael Attanasio who’s joining former pitcher Roger Clemens’ defense team.

Padres general manager Kevin Towers tells the Chronicle he “couldn’t be happier” for both Attanasio and Clemens, a seven-time Cy Young award winner who pleaded not guilty today to lying to Congress when he testified in 2008 that he never used performance-enhancing drugs. Attanasio helped the Padres GM through the Mitchell Commission’s investigation of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.

The Chronicle reports:

Attanasio is well known in the Southern California community of baseball agents and executives because of friendships he built through his father, Tony, a trailblazing agent who represented Bobby Valentine, Dave Stewart, Davey Lopes and Ichiro Suzuki.

Moreover, he and his wife, former KPRC-TV reporter Susan Lennon, are close friends with Towers, baseball agent Barry Axelrod and their spouses.

In San Diego, federal prosecutors failed to convict for Attanasio’s client, Daniel Sulac, an Arthur Andersen accountant charged in the Peregrine Systems fraud when two trials in 2007 and 2008 both ended with deadlocked juries.

Attanasio served as a federal prosecutor in DC from 1991-1999.

Hat tip: WSJ law blog.