Yes. That is exactly how the government works - the military, drug companies, energy, on and on.
I worked for Honeywell, the most ethical company of all the ones I worked for. Having said that, they hired the colonel who managed the project I worked on to be the program manager of that project. They waited the statutory amount of time for him to officially take that job. However, in the meantime they’d call him in to schmooze his way through the all the intervening secretaries in the Pentagon so we could get connected to the actual decision maker there. Once connected he’d leave.