Danny Pino’s career took a 180-degree turn when he signed on to play drug cartel leader Miguel Galindo on the FX series “Mayans M.C.” The Miami-born actor spent a dozen years playing law-abiding good guys on two hit series, “Cold Case” on CBS (2003-10) and NBC’s “Law and Order: SVU” (2011-15).

A notable exception to this track record was Pino’s 2003 guest-starring role on FX’s “The Shield” as Armadillo Quinteroon, a Mexican drug lord and serial rapist. Kurt Sutter, who created “Sons of Anarchy” and “Mayans,” was then writing for the series and remembered Pino when he was looking for someone to play the sleekly attired yet savage Galindo.

“I fought for the role of Miguel,” says Pino, 45, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. “The universe of ‘The Shield’ was so dark and so kinetic that I knew anything Kurt would want to do in ‘Mayans’ I wanted to explore.”

Pino credits “Cold Case,” on which he played Detective Scotty Valens, with teaching him to act in front of a camera. “I think it helped me understand what that weird contraption was that was pointed in my direction,” he says with a laugh. Still, he wanted to prove that he could play something other than a detective. He expected some resistance.

“When you’ve played a detective for a majority of your career, people tend to think, ‘Let’s see whether he can pull this off.’ They’re protecting the show,” Pino says. “They want to make sure this isn’t an offer being given out of friendship and loyalty. But that it’s an offer being given out of an earned respect.”

Fortunately for Pino, Sutter didn’t think casting him would send up any red flags. “The role of a drug cartel boss has become almost as cliché as a mafia wise guy,” he says. “I needed an actor who could help me turn the stereotype upside down. Someone who could deliver charm and vulnerability as convincingly as power and menace. There was only one actor I knew who could bring Miguel Galindo to life, and that was Danny Pino.”

Season 1 saw Galindo questioning his loyalties after he is forced to work with Mexican rebel group Los Olvidados and deciding how to handle family betrayals. With Season 2, Galindo faces an ethical dilemma: He’s trying to go legit, bidding on a construction project called Agripark to be built in the desert surrounding the series’ fictitious locale of Santo Padre, Calif.

“Not only are we going to be planting sustainable crops. I see a school. I see a hospital,” says Pino. “Miguel is being creative out of the destruction his family has caused. His father Jose founded the cartel. Miguel went to Cornell. He’s trying to take his family away from what he saw his father go through. Much in the same that the Kennedys did during Prohibition. To legitimize themselves. That’s his goal because Miguel knows that his future as the head of a cartel is untenable.”

He also has a new employee — Marcus Alvarez (Emilio Rivera), who left the motorcycle club to work for Galindo. “Miguel’s always looking to bring people closer to him so that he can leverage the most control,” says Pino, who is married with two children. “I don’t think it’s inconsequential that Alvarez is the highest up on the Mayans. And Miguel is in a symbiotic relationship with them. They handle a lot of the dirty business for him. So to have somebody who has influence is a good thing.”

The sometimes sickening acts of violence on “Mayans M.C.” (during Season 1, one cartel traitor had his arm cut off in a church pew) has been a source of controversy, but Pino defends the show’s graphic content.

“The violence you see in ‘Mayans’ is inherited from ‘Sons of Anarchy,’ but it doesn’t stop there,” he says. “I was watching ‘The Godfather’ recently. So you’ll remember when they strangled Luca Brasi how visceral that is. His eyes look like they’re about to bulge out of his head. [Director Francis Ford] Coppola stays on Luca until he’s still. He wants you to see what this world really is. It is bloody. It is ugly. It is fearsome. And I think Kurt is telling a similar tale. And the repercussions of it.”