One charge against former NJ state Sen. Bryant dropped

A federal judge in Trenton has dismissed one of the fraud and political corruption counts against former state Sen. Wayne Bryant, but allowed 12 other charges to stand.

District Court Judge Freda Wolfson issued her opinion last night, about three months after hearing oral arguments on defense motions seeking to dismiss all charges against Bryant and co-defendant R. Michael Gallagher.

The judge set a Sept. 8 trial date for the men, who have pleaded not guilty.

Bryant, a Camden County Democrat and former chair of the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, was accused of having a $35,000-a-year no-show job at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

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 cooking the books to make 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 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 nearly tripled the value of his public pension from $28,000 a year to $81,000.

Wolfson dismissed the charge against Bryant related to his employment at Rutgers. During oral arguments in March, she noted that Bryant did occasionally lecture there, and prosecutors did not allege that he was given the Rutgers job in exchange for his influence.

Rutgers administrators are "totally within their rights if he showed up once a year and gave a lecture . . . to pay him whatever they wanted," the judge said in March.

Wolfson also severed several counts against Gallagher into a separate trial. Those counts are related to allegations that he engaged in a scheme at the school to pay himself bonuses - charges unrelated to Bryant.