WASHINGTON — After Barack Obama campaigned on a pledge to fight lobbyist influence in Washington, aides announced yesterday that his transition team will include Washington lobbyists, who will be banned from working on policy areas on which they have lobbied in the past year.

The ethics rules for the transition offer the first public test of how Obama as president will balance the populist goal of curtailing a Washington influence industry that helps well-heeled special interests against the practical limitations of staffing a White House with experienced Washington hands. Often, experienced players in the capital are inevitably drawn to the rich rewards of lobbying.

Though often criticized, the "revolving-door" between government service and lobbying has proven to be a durable feature of the capital's culture.

Transition co-chairman John Podesta called Obama's policy "the strictest and most far-reaching ethics rules of any transition team in history."

In campaign speeches around the country, Obama blasted Republican rival Sen. John McCain for placing former corporate lobbyists in high-profile campaign positions. Obama promised an administration free of lobbyist influence — in one common formulation, declaring, "They won't find a job in my White House."

But the fine print was always more qualified. An ethics platform Obama announced in July 2007 promised he would not allow members of his administration to make decisions on regulations or contracts that affected a lobbying client who had employed them in the previous two years.

Podesta justified the transition team's shorter one-year time limits on handling matters of interest to a former lobbying client by noting that jobs on the transition staff offer only short-term employment.

The transition team staff also will be barred from lobbying the Obama administration for one year on policy areas they addressed in their work. Obama's ethics platform promises that departing members of his administration will face a blanket prohibition on lobbying the executive branch for the remainder of his term in office.

In keeping with a policy adopted by the Obama campaign, the transition will not accept contributions from lobbyists. While the transition receives $5.2 million in taxpayer funding, the remainder of its $12 million budget will be raised from private sources, Podesta said. Contributions will be limited to $5,000 per person.