Ex-freeholder testifies at Bryant trial; prosecution rests

TRENTON - In 1996, shortly after Wayne R. Bryant was hired as an attorney for the Gloucester County Board of Social Services, John Manganello heard complaints that Bryant was not doing the work.

Instead, he heard that Bryant, then a state senator, was sending associates from his law firm to cover social-services hearings. Manganello, then a Gloucester County freeholder, called Bryant.

"I asked him if he could go himself," Manganello testified yesterday. "He responded very cordially. He said . . . 'I'm sorry if I caused you any embarassment. It won't happen again.' "

But, federal prosecutors contend, it did happen again, throughout the decade Bryant worked for the social-services board.

Bryant, a Camden County Democrat, has been charged with pension fraud by taking credit for work prosecutors say he farmed out to junior lawyers in his former firm, Zeller & Bryant. The social-services board hired Bryant, not his firm.

Bryant's attorney, Carl Poplar, said the practice of lawyers' farming out their public work is commonplace - and legal - in New Jersey.

From July 2002 to August 2006, Bryant's associates worked 3,700 hours for the social-services board. Bryant worked 15 hours over that time.

The social-services board paid Bryant more than $53,000 a year from 2003 to 2005. His job was eliminated in 2006 in what county officials called a cost-cutting move.

Manganello, who was a freeholder from 1988 to 1996, told Poplar that he did not note his conversation with Bryant in writing. He said he did not want to "embarrass the senator," whom he held in "phenomenal esteem."

"There's no one in public office, maybe one or two other people, I think higher of," he said.

Manganello was not scheduled to be a witness until yesterday. He said he read news accounts of the trial, then decided to call his attorney about his 1996 conversation with Bryant.

Manganello said he met with a prosecutor and an FBI agent for the first time on Friday, at the Medport Restaurant & Diner in Medford.

The prosecution rested its case yesterday afternoon after more than five weeks of testimony.

With the close of the government's case, the defense made the standard motion for the judge to issue acquittals.

Bryant also faces charges related to a second public job he held, at the School of Osteopathic Medicine, in Stratford. Prosecutors say he did little to no real work in the job, which they said amounted to a bribe for his influence as chair of the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee.

Bryant steered millions to the school after he was put on the payroll, prosecutors said. That job also counted toward Bryant's existing state pension.

The school's former dean, R. Michael Gallagher, is standing trial as well, accused of rigging the process to hire Bryant and hiding the true nature of their arrangement.

District Court Judge Freda Wolfson did not signal a willingness to acquit on any of those charges, but she did raise some concerns about the social-services charge.

"We have issues here as to whether this is a crime or something else," the judge said. She also said the social-services board was "complicit in this."

"Where was the accountability with this board?" Wolfson asked.

"Whether the board is complicit or not does not make [Bryant's] conduct excusable," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joshua Drew.

The board was dissolved in 2007, and county government assumed its responsibilities.

Bryant did not run for reelection last year, after he and Gallagher were indicted. He no longer holds any of his public jobs, and his state pension has been shelved pending the outcome of the trial.

The judge is withholding her ruling on the defense motions for acquittal until the end of the trial.