The FBI arrested a Fairfax County sheriff’s deputy Thursday on charges of possessing photos and videos of child pornography on his home computer, the U.S. Attorney’s Office reported.

Master Deputy Robert A. Romero Jr. resigned Thursday morning after 19 years with the Sheriff’s Department, Fairfax Sheriff’s Lt. Sonny Cachuela said.

FBI agents executing a federal warrant searched Romero’s Centreville home Thursday and removed his desktop computer and an external hard drive, according to a court document.

The document said Romero admitted that “he has downloaded images of child pornography from the Internet” and did so as recently as last week. Photos and videos included children posing naked and engaging in sexual acts with adult males, the document said.

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“A forensic preview search of the hard drive revealed what the forensic agent approximated as over 1,000 images of child pornography” and more than 100 videos, the court document stated.

The investigation began more than 10 months ago, when an online undercover agent searched for child pornography on the file-sharing network Limewire Jan. 4.

The FBI special agent reportedly downloaded nine computer files involving child pornography from a computer that was sharing 83 files on the Internet, the document said. Two of the videos downloaded from that computer depicted sexual acts.

A subpoena revealed the IP address was assigned to Romero’s Centreville residence when the files were downloaded. U.S. Attorney’s spokesman James Rybicki said Romero will be held in custody until he appears in federal court Tuesday for a detention hearing.

dgenz@dcexaminer.com