Tommy Carmellini is an agent with the CIA.
If delving into specialties, Carmellini is a thief for the Company, a very experienced, very talented thief who was recruited while in college not in spite of his chosen way of paying the bills but because of it. He is quite good at getting into places he should not, getting things that do not belong to him, and getting away with it.
For someone involved in such illegal behavior, his way of coming to work for his current employer might seem a tad oxymoronic - he was a student at the Stanford Law School. He enjoyed his studies and planned on using his degree to move into the profitable world of corporate law with a possible late lateral movement into politics. Getting through law school, though, was expensive and Carmellini did not come from a wealthy family. Theft paid the bills.
Carmellini learned quickly though that working with someone you trust can have a downside when that person wasn't as trustworthy as you thought and his cohort gave him up for a lighter sentence and agreeing, when he was approached by a recruiter, to work for the CIA seemed a better idea than jail. He was allowed, perhaps encouraged, to finish his degree, went through the Farm to learn his spy craft, and then moved into his new career, different than he had intended but a lot more fun and exciting.
It comes as no surprise that a covert organization like the CIA, tasked with learning secrets about every other nation, could use a man of Carmellini's skills. He would be sent all over the world from black-bag jobs and he would never predict if the next place he would find his way into would be an embassy or a corporate office or a rich man mansion. Secrets are hidden all over and men like Carmellini are trained to find them. In the States, he is occasionally seconded to the FBI to do some quiet jobs for them and, of one got really technical, almost certainly a couple on American soil for the CIA.
When he is not on the job, Carmellini has half interest in a locksmith shop in D.C. along with Willie the Wire, a man 20 years his senior and someone who has forgotten more about locks than most ever knew. Their friendship is deep but so is their good-natured competition.
In the many assignments Carmellini has had over the years he has been with the Agency, he came into contact with Jake Grafton, an Admiral in the U.S. Navy and a force in the CIA. Their work together gave them a chance to become friends and soon Carmellini was the go-to guy when Grafton needed help. Conversely, when Carmellini came upon something big, it would be Grafton he would seek.