After serving as chief legislative aide to Virginia Delegate Robert T. Andrews (R-McLean), he attended the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William and Mary.

[2] McDowell was a candidate for the Virginia General Assembly,[7] running in 2003 to represent the 35th District in the House of Delegates; he lost to Steve Shannon.

[8][9] McDowell was first appointed to a seat on the Federal Communications Commission by U.S. President George W. Bush and unanimously confirmed by the Senate in 2006.

When he was reappointed to the Commission on June 2, 2009, McDowell became the first Republican to be appointed to an independent agency by President Barack Obama.

McDowell was widely perceived to be a front-runner for chairman of the FCC had Mitt Romney won the 2012 presidential election.

[11][12] On May 17, 2013, McDowell stepped down from the commission to join the Hudson Institute's Center for Economics of the Internet as a visiting fellow.

"[17] McDowell also opposed classifying Internet services as telecommunications services under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934; in congressional testimony, op-eds, and articles, McDowell argued that adopting net neutrality regulations would be an "FCC power grab" and could "morph into a regulatory regime for the entire Internet ecosystem, affecting far more than ISPs.

[34][35][36] In August 2011 the FCC's Media Bureau issued an order removing all references to the Fairness Doctrine from the Code of Federal Regulations.

[44][45][46] McDowell recused himself from a vote on an $86 billion merger between AT&T and BellSouth citing his 2006 ethics agreement with the Senate Commerce Committee.

McDowell issued a separate statement expressing his concern that the report did not go far enough to propose presumption against intergovernmental encroachment on internet governance.