From the New York Times:

Lawmaker in New Jersey Is Charged With Fraud

By RICHARD G. JONES

Published: March 30, 2007

TRENTON, March 29 — One of New Jersey’s veteran legislators was indicted on fraud and corruption charges on Thursday. He is accused of using his considerable influence to gain a $37,000-a-year no-show job at the state medical school in exchange for bringing it millions of dollars in grants.

The 20-count federal indictment against State Senator Wayne R. Bryant — a Camden County Democrat and former chairman of the Budget and Appropriations Committee — was the outgrowth of a federal monitor’s report on the troubled University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

The former dean at the university’s School of Osteopathic Medicine in Camden County, R. Michael Gallagher, who arranged the position for Mr. Bryant, was also charged in the indictment.

In bringing the long-awaited charges against Mr. Bryant, 59, who was vacationing in Mexico when the indictment was announced, the United States attorney, Christopher J. Christie, continued his crusade against what he described as a culture of corruption in New Jersey.

At a news conference outside the federal courthouse here, Mr. Christie said that Mr. Bryant “corrupted multiple political and public agencies, according to the indictment, all to feed his own insatiable desire for more public money to put in his own pocket.”

In all, Mr. Bryant was earning about $175,000 a year from his government jobs, including his $49,000 salary in the State Legislature.

Federal officials said they did not believe that the vacationing Mr. Bryant was a flight risk, and were working with his lawyer, Carl D. Poplar, to arrange for the senator to surrender. Although Mr. Poplar declined to comment about the indictment on Thursday, Mr. Bryant has maintained that he has done nothing wrong.

The indictments sent shock waves through the State House. One analyst said that it might be the most important case brought against a sitting public official in recent years.

“I think that the chair of the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee is one of the most powerful people in the state,” said James W. Hughes, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Public Policy at Rutgers University. “When someone at that level gets indicted, it sends a very, very clear message to lawmakers that no one is immune.”

Mr. Bryant, a lawyer in Cherry Hill who has cut a distinctive figure in the Legislature over the past 25 years with his carefully groomed beard and tailored suits, had long been the target of criticism for holding several state and local positions at the same time and for providing other ones for five of his relatives.

The practice by public officials of holding multiple positions is not inherently illegal, and for years an unabashed Mr. Bryant deflected questions about it.

But the charges brought against him on Thursday accuse him of using his political influence to win three positions: in addition to the medical school post, associate counsel of the Gloucester County Board of Social Services, which paid almost $370,000 over 10 years, and adjunct professor at Rutgers University School of Law in Camden, for which he received more than $100,000 from 1997 to 2006.

It was Mr. Bryant’s work at the medical school that attracted attention, and in September the federal monitor, Herbert J. Stern, found that from 2003 to 2006 the hospital essentially paid Mr. Bryant to “lobby himself.” During that time, Mr. Bryant helped bring $12.8 million in state money to the medical school through his role on the budget committee and his Senate position as deputy majority leader.

Mr. Christie said that although Mr. Bryant worked at the school one day a week, he conspired with the dean, Mr. Gallagher, to be credited with three days of work, which not only increased Mr. Bryant’s salary but also inflated the value of his pension.

In all, Mr. Christie said, Mr. Bryant’s additional jobs over the past three years increased his pension from about $28,000 a year to about $81,000.

The indictment said that in the 10 years that he worked on the social services board — which Mr. Christie called “a particularly egregious example” — Mr. Bryant was paid about $370,000.

At Rutgers, the 40-page indictment went on, Mr. Bryant performed “little or no work,” appearing there about once a year.

As for the former dean, who stepped down a year ago, the federal prosecutor said he had “cooked the books” at the university through his “symbiotic relationship” with Mr. Bryant.

In the arrangement, Mr. Christie said, the dean — who contractually was to receive about $20,000 if a division of the school, the Headache Center, returned a profit — falsified the financial record and received a bonus even though the center lost money for three consecutive years, from 2002 to 2004.

Mr. Bryant and Mr. Gallagher began working together in 2002 shortly after Gov. James E. McGreevey appointed an independent commission to examine ways to increase efficiencies at state-financed medical schools, according to the indictment.

The commission recommended merging several of the schools, which the indictment said led Mr. Gallagher to perceive that his position could be imperiled.

When Mr. Bryant broached the subject of getting a job at the school, Mr. Gallagher consented and created a position called program support coordinator, the indictment said, even though essentially the same job already existed under a different title.

It was understood, the indictment charges, that a condition of Mr. Bryant’s no-show job was his advocacy for the school in the Legislature and his continued work to keep the commission’s recommendations from being adopted.

Mr. Gallagher was not available for comment. His lawyer, Jeremy D. Frey, declined to comment on the indictment.

In his news conference, Mr. Christie’s most scathing comments were directed at Mr. Bryant, whose conduct he called the most shocking and brazen that he had encountered in a public corruption case.

“You’ve got to wonder why this guy was in charge of giving out taxpayer money,” he said. “And you’ve got to wonder why no one else was watching the store.”

It was Mr. Christie’s investigation of Mr. Bryant’s activities as chairman of the budget committee that led him to flood the State House with subpoenas for information about items inserted in the state budget at the 11th hour.

Mr. Bryant’s indictment comes during a trying period for him personally as well as politically. Last April, his son, Wayne R. Bryant Jr., 37, died after a brief illness.

As the investigation dug more deeply into Mr. Bryant’s dealings and the prospect of an indictment appeared increasingly likely, the senator began to withdraw from public life. Fellow lawmakers said he was far quieter during sessions, and his appearances when the Legislature was not in session were less frequent. Last month he announced that he was retiring from his law firm, Zeller & Bryant L.L.P. And this month, Mr. Bryant said that he would not seek another term.

“Today’s news threatens to overshadow all of those worthy achievements,” said Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts Jr., who represents the same district as Mr. Bryant.

Senator Leonard Lance, the minority leader and Mr. Bryant’s longtime colleague, said that the charges “made it essential that systemic ethical reform must be enacted by the Legislature immediately.”

Ronald Smothers contributed reporting from Trenton and David W. Chen from New Brunswick.