LEWISTON – A Lewiston resident is moving on up in the ranks of the Maine State Police force.

Thomas E. Kelly has been promoted to the rank of lieutenant. The promotion was made by the chief of the state police, Col. Craig A. Poulin, who assigned Kelly to oversee the new Gambling Control Unit in Augusta. The Gambling Control Unit works in conjunction with the state’s new Gambling Control Board to oversee and regulate the operation of slot machines at Bangor Raceway.

Kelly is a 16-year veteran of the state police. He joined the department in 1988 after four years with the Auburn Police Department. He has patrolled along the Maine Turnpike, in the Litchfield area as a member of Troop D-Thomaston, and also served in the Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Unit.

For the past four years Kelly has served as a sergeant in the Records Management Unit as the project manager of the department’s new computerized records system and supervisor of the uniform crime reporting program.

Kelly, 43, grew up in Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y., and served four years with the Navy at the Brunswick Naval Air Station. He has an associate degree in criminal justice from Andover College and is working toward his bachelor’s degree at the University of Southern Maine.

Kelly and his wife, Donna, are the parents to a son, Brandon, 18, who attends the University of Maine at Farmington, and a daughter, Micaela, 15, who is a sophomore at St. Dom’s in Auburn.