Nearly six months after opening a satellite law office in Santa Monica, Stubbs Alderton & Markiles is adding its first Santa Monica partner.

Anthony Keats has joined the Sherman Oaks law firm as partner to help establish a brand development and content protection practice group. He will co-chair the group with Konrad Gatien, who has also joined the firm as partner.

Keats will be based in the Santa Monica office. He is the first of the firm’s partners to be located full time in Silicon Beach. The other partners rotate through that office for meetings and events.

Keats, who was a founding partner at the Beverly Hills firm Keats McFarland & Wilson, brings trademark and brand experience to Stubbs Alderton, which has traditionally practiced corporate, securities, mergers and acquisition and intellectual property law. The new practice group will register and manage trademarks and undertake trademark litigation in addition to overseeing brand and content strategies for clients.

Keats, who has worked with entertainment and retail clients, said joining Stubbs Alderton helps put him at the center of the fast-growing digital media industry.

“It’s a great opportunity for me to take my practice, which has been in traditional entertainment and retail, and bring it into a new era of marketing and media,” he said. “The firm has been wise to establish themselves in Santa Monica. They really had their finger on the pulse of what I think will be the biggest growth area for the economy here in L.A.”

Stubbs Alderton has long worked with tech clients, but began to beef up its presence in the community last fall when it opened its Santa Monica office.

The firm has also set up a preccelerator program to mentor entrepreneurs and provide them with office space to prepare them for entering an accelerator program. Scott Alderton, the firm’s managing partner, said the program currently works with two startups in Santa Monica and plans to add two.

Stubbs Alderton does have some competition for the Silicon Beach market. Silicon Valley firm Cooley opened in Santa Monica last summer.

But Alderton said adding a partner to the Santa Monica office helps further cement the firm’s presence among its technology and digital media clients.

“The office was bustling before Tony got here, but now he and another lawyer will be permanently based there,” he said. “It allows us to expand our physical presence in that office.”