Bryant's attorney, Carl Poplar, did not return a phone call seeking comment. Gallagher's attorney, Jeremy Frey, said he could not comment.
Bryant, a Camden County Democrat and former chair of the Budget and Appropriations Committee, was accused of accepting a $35,000-a-year no-show job at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ). In exchange, prosecutors said, he steered millions of dollars from the state to the public university.
Gallagher, a former dean of the university's School of Osteopathic Medicine in Stratford, is accused of arranging Bryant's job and making it appear that Bryant had done work.
Both were indicted by a federal grand jury in Trenton last year. Bryant did not run for reelection last year after he was indicted.
Bryant's attorneys argued that there was nothing illegal about Bryant's holding a job at UMDNJ or lobbying on its behalf. And, they said, there was no proof that he took any action on the school's behalf that he would not have if he had not been employed there.
But Wolfson ruled that the indictment sufficiently describes "a classic bribery scheme" in which Bryant is accused of accepting payment for his services.
"When an official makes a quid pro quo bribery agreement . . . he ceases making decisions according to his best judgment as a legislator . . . and allows the payor to place a thumb on the scale of his decision-making process," the judge wrote.
Bryant held two other public jobs - as an attorney for the Gloucester County Board of Social Services and as an adjunct professor at Rutgers University-Camden. Prosecutors said he did little or no work in those jobs either.
From 2003 to 2005, when he held his Senate seat and the three public jobs, Bryant illegally increased the value of his public pension from $28,000 a year to $81,000, prosecutors said.
