Celey was among a group of about five State Department employees or contractors who were targeted for prosecution after March 2008 news reports of employees there accessing the electronic passport files of three presidential candidates, Senators John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The inspector general's office at the State Department later found that there had been widespread breaches of PIERS. Obama was elected president in November, and he appointed Clinton secretary of state in charge of the State Department.

The inspector general's office looked at the passport files of 150 politicians, entertainers and athletes and found that 127 of those passports had been accessed at least once between September 2002 and March 2008. Those passport files were accessed 4,148 times during that period, and one person's passport was searched 356 times by 77 users.

Those reports prompted members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee to call for prosecutions of the passport snoopers.

Celey is the fourth current or former State Department employee to plead guilty in this investigation.

In September, Lawrence C. Yontz, a former foreign service officer and intelligence analyst, pleaded guilty to unlawfully accessing nearly 200 passport files. Yontz was sentenced on Dec. 19 to 12 months of probation and ordered to perform 50 hours of community service.