"This looks very ugly," said Mark Cedrone, a Philadelphia lawyer who has defended several high-profile corruption cases. "It's a lot of time for what one might refer to as a run-of-the-mill corrupt scheme."
U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie yesterday said that Bryant, if convicted, could receive the longest sentence by far in the history of New Jersey political corruption.
"We calculated 24 to 30 years," Christie said. "You're talking big numbers."
Bryant is charged with trading his Senate influence - lobbying on behalf of a public medical college - for a state job for which he did little or no work.
"Ultra-conservatively, he's looking at 10-plus years . . . it could get as high as 20 years" if convicted, said Haddon Heights defense lawyer Rocco Cipparone. "It's hard to predict a sentence at this point, because all you have to rely on is a one-sided indictment by the government. But no matter how you slice it, it looks bad."
Elected officials recently sentenced on corruption charges include former Philadelphia City Councilman Rick Mariano, who was sentenced to six years for taking $28,000 in bribes, and former City Treasurer Cory Kemp, who got 10 years for steering hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts to firms favored by a power broker.
The indictment alleges that Bryant used his position as chairman of the Budget and Appropriations Committee to steer millions of dollars to the state-run University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. In return, prosecutors say, he got a $35,000-a-year no-show job at the school.
R. Michael Gallagher, the former dean of UMDNJ's School of Osteopathic Medicine, was charged with arranging the job for Bryant, for which prosecutors say the senator did little work other than reading newspapers.
