Brendan James Penny (born November 9, 1978) is a Canadian film and television actor who first became well known to TV audiences as A.J. Varland in the first season of Whistler that aired in Canada from 2006–2008. He is perhaps best known as Detective Brian Lucas in Motive, a Canadian crime drama centred on a team of Vancouver homicide detectives, also starring Kristin Lehman, Louis Ferreira and Lauren Holly, which aired from 2013–2016. Brendan currently stars as Kevin O'Brien in the Hallmark Channel family drama series Chesapeake Shores, which premiered on August 14, 2016. He has also been the hero of a number of Hallmark originals.