"Sen. Bryant made himself rich in the short term and secure in the long term at the expense of the taxpayers," U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie said at a news conference in Trenton on the steps of the federal courthouse. "Today, he'll be held to account for his conduct and his betrayal of the public trust."
The charges against Bryant stem from his employment at the state-run University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and at two other publicly funded agencies and institutions.
Essentially, Bryant is charged with doing little to no work at those jobs, which also nearly tripled the value of his public pension.
In one of those jobs, Bryant was hired to represent the Gloucester County Board of Social Services, but farmed out the work to other lawyers at his firm, according to the indictment. Between 2002 and 2006, Bryant worked just 14.8 hours for Social Services but was paid about $200,000, prosecutors said.
Bryant, 59, also held an adjunct professorship at Rutgers University's Camden campus, yet rarely appeared at the school, the indictment said.
The former dean of UMDNJ's School of Osteopathic Medicine in Stratford, R. Michael Gallagher, was also charged with 13 counts in the indictment for what prosecutors said was arranging Bryant's job and "cooking the books" to make it appear as though the senator actually did work there.
Gallagher, who was in Florida yesterday, also was charged with running a fraudulent scheme to pay himself bonuses from 2002 to 2004. Gallagher resigned from the school in 2006. Prosecutors were arranging for him to surrender as well.
Bryant's no-show job at UMDNJ was uncovered by a federal monitor appointed to oversee the troubled university. UMDNJ agreed to the monitor in 2005 to avoid charges of Medicaid fraud.
