A Fort Worth police officer fired in an overtime scandal in 2010 must be hired back and paid for the nearly seven years he did not work, an arbitrator ruled Monday.

Officer James Dunn was one of eight traffic officers fired for reportedly altering tickets to steal overtime money that was part of a state grant, KXAS-TV (NBC5) reported.

Dunn is, however, the only one of the officers to get his job back.

He could be awarded up to $400,000 in back pay, not including seven years of retirement contributions and sick and vacation time, attorney Terry Daffron told the station.

The sum of the back pay could be one of the largest in the department's history, she said.

Dunn is expected to return to work soon after getting a refresher at the police academy, Daffron told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

"Officer Dunn is very excited to finally be vindicated after living the last 6 1/2 years in a nightmare," she wrote in an email to NBC5. "Officer Dunn is looking forward to wearing the FWPD uniform again."

Arbitrator Norman Bennett told the Star-Telegram that while the officer "engaged in negligent misconduct" by writing inaccurate times, he did not intentionally falsify the documents.

Supervisors who signed off on the overtime reports should have noticed that Dunn had written the reports the same way showing that he had issued tickets in 15-minute intervals over a six-year period, Bennett told the Star-Telegram.

Bennett ruled Dunn's discipline should be a 14-day suspension rather than termination.

Bennett tossed out the appeals of three of the seven other fired officers— Ronald Wiggington, Marcus Mosqueda and Tahwana Zavala — and denied Maurice Middleton's appeal, the Star-Telegram reported.

Two other officers, Robert Peoples and Patrick Aguilar, withdrew their appeals.

Dunn was the only officer who did not surrender his peace officer's license during the process, which made him eligible to be reinstated, the Star-Telegram reported.