President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on a pledge to “drain the swamp” and rid Washington of special interests, but that hasn’t stopped some federal contractors from feeling bullish about their prospects.

McLean-based consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton is the latest to show that optimism after it announced this week plans to acquire Maryland information technology contractor Aquilent for $250 million by the end of December, adding a 350-person operation based in Laurel, Md.

The move is an attempt to capi­tal­ize on changes in the way the government stores and processes information, in which new capabilities like cloud computing and fast-paced “agile” software development have re-invented the information technology business.

“This is not your father’s or grandfather’s Booz Allen,” said Booz Allen Hamilton executive vice president Greg Wenzel. “It’s about modular solutions versus the big-bang solutions that we’ve done in the past. We need to do rapid sprints to get capabilities out quickly.”

The company’s reputation has been tarnished in recent years by a few employees’ involvement in high-profile leaks of classified national security data. Edward Snowden’s 2011 NSA leaks, which sparked a backlash in the national security community by revealing classified government surveillance programs, happened while Snowden worked for the firm. More recently a Booz Allen employee based in Maryland was charged with hoarding decades of classified material in his house and car.

But the backlash has not stopped Booz Allen from doubling down on its work with the federal government, even after public spending slowed in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

Still, the $250 million deal announced Tuesday was seen as an aggressive move for Booz Allen, which is not known for frequent buyouts. A company release said the acquisition will add close to $35 million to the company’s annual revenues and will begin adding to the company’s operating margins in the fourth quarter of next year.

Booz Allen is riding a growing wave of cloud-based IT adoption across the federal government. The firm recently won part of a $25 million contract to help simplify the General Services Administration’s public websites and a seven-year contract with the U.S. Postal Service for mobile app development. The company has made other acquisitions to support this strategy, including last year’s purchase of a company called SPARC, which specializes in so-called “agile” software development.

The acquisition announced Tuesday “is meaningful because Booz hasn’t made a lot of acquisitions, especially of this size-range, in a while,” said Bob Kipps, managing partner of KippsDeSanto, an aerospace-defense investment bank. “They’re feeling optimistic about the marketplace and they’re on the offensive.”

The hefty price tag buys the firm a slew of contracts with agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and the General Services Administration and helps expand the firm’s footprint in Maryland.

Aquilent’s business took off when the Obama Administration sped up certain open initiatives that made government data accessible online, driving average annual revenue growth of 28 percent since 2011. The firm developed a reputation for helping create user-friendly government websites and mobile-phone portals, including USA.gov and the postal service’s USPS.com, and the embattled Obamacare portal Healthcare.gov. It also provides web hosting services for Amazon Web Services (AWS), a fast-growing segment of the Federal market that shows few signs of slowing.

Some areas of the business could suffer if President-elect Trump’s administration is less committed to federal open data initiatives. But Wenzel does not think policy changes will hurt the business, suggesting tumultuous presidential transitions are par for the course for a massive 102-year-old firm like Booz Allen.

“If something happens with open data we will pivot and shift accordingly,” he said. “It just feels like the digital tools that we use in our personal lives will also help our public servants and warriors do their missions as well.”