Bill Baroni just wants to move on with his life.

His next stop will be a federal prison cell.

In closing a long chapter in one of New Jersey’s most bizarre political scandals, Baroni, a former top appointee of Gov. Chris Christie to the Port Authority, gave up his appeals on Tuesday and asked a federal judge to send him to prison for his role in the scheme to punish Fort Lee's mayor by creating massive traffic jams near the George Washington Bridge over four days in September 2013.

U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton sentenced Baroni, 47, to 18 months in federal prison, a six-month reduction to the prison term she handed him nearly two years ago.

"Now I will move on to the next chapter and continue to serve my community as I have done," Baroni said after leaving the federal courthouse in Newark and heading back to his apartment in Manhattan.

His attorney, Carlos Ortiz, who had argued for a sentence that included prison time and a period of home confinement, said Baroni would not appeal Wigenton's sentence. Ortiz added that Baroni would likely report to a federal prison within 45 days.

Baroni had come before Wigenton for resentencing for his role in the so-called Bridgegate plot after a federal appeals court last year upheld his federal conviction on most of the charges on which he was found guilty in 2016. Wigenton, in noting on Tuesday that the appeals panel dismissed two of seven counts against Baroni, went along with a recommendation by prosecutors that he should serve at least 18 months behind bars.

Before he was sentenced, Baroni stood and addressed the court for about five minutes, expressing contrition and saying he had lost his focus. It was clearly an emotional and humbling moment for Baroni, as his voice choked and he struggled to hold back tears.

“I always thought I had a clear sense of right and wrong,” he said, a copy of his prepared remarks shaking in his hand as he spoke. “When I went to work for the Port Authority and for Governor Christie, that line disappeared.”

Baroni said he had been "sucked into this cult and culture" of Chris Christie, who at the time was preparing to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

"I wanted to be on the team," Baroni told the court as nearly 20 relatives and friends sat behind him. "I wanted to please him."

Before passing sentence, Wigenton praised Baroni for his volunteer work with gay homeless youth and with undocumented immigrants since his conviction in 2016.

"I understand that you have done a lot of positive things," the judge said. "I don’t think you will stop doing that."

But Wigenton said that "the facts haven’t changed" in what happened on the streets of Fort Lee over four chaotic days in September 2013.

The defeated, penitent persona that Baroni brought before Wigenton marked a dramatic change for him.

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Nearly six years ago, Baroni, a former Republican state senator who broke with his party to lead the campaign in the state Legislature to sanction gay marriage, was flying high as the deputy executive director of the Port Authority.

Christie considered him a top ally. Moderate Republicans across the nation saw him as a resonant, insightful voice in a party that had become increasingly conservative.

Then came Bridgegate — the astonishing plot to snarl traffic in Fort Lee in September 2013 as a way of punishing the borough’s Democratic mayor for not endorsing Christie, a Republican, for re-election.

As the story of the traffic scheme unfolded, Christie's presidential quest also began to fizzle. New Jersey — and its bare-knuckles politics — became a source of jokes among late-night TV comics. And Baroni's rising political star faded as he was quickly targeted by federal investigators as one of the prime conspirators.

Baroni was convicted with his co-defendant, Bridget Anne Kelly, in November 2016 for helping to orchestrate the Bridgegate plot, and was sentenced in March 2017 to two years in prison. Wigenton scheduled Tuesday's hearing after a federal appeals court in December dismissed two civil rights counts against Baroni and Kelly and upheld their convictions on wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy and misapplying property of an organization receiving federal funds.

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Tuesday's hearing, however, was seen largely as a formality in the long-running case because Wigenton has allowed Baroni and Kelly to stay out of prison until they exhausted their appeals. But in a move that surprised Kelly’s attorneys, who are appealing her conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court, Baroni said he was abandoning his appeals.

Baroni’s decision to give up his appeals and head to prison answers one of the lingering questions in the Bridgegate case: Would any of the conspirators actually go to prison?

But Baroni's move to give up his appeals and accept prison leaves another question unanswered: Why did the Bridgegate investigation stop with Baroni, Kelly and the plot’s chief architect, David Wildstein?

During the 2016 trial, federal prosecutors — as well as defense attorneys for Baroni and Kelly — openly alludedto the possibility that Christie knew of the plan to punish Mayor Mark Sokolich of Fort Lee by shutting down two of three local access lanes to the bridge, causing traffic backups across the tiny borough.

But prosecutors never pursued a case against Christie or several of his top advisers. When questioned, they insisted there was not enough evidence to bring a credible case against Christie or other top state officials.

Christie has insisted he knew nothing of the Bridgegate affair. But many officials, including President Donald Trump, said Christie knew far more about the plot than he let on. While campaigning against Christie for the Republican presidential nomination in 2015, Trump even said Christie "totally knew" about the Bridgegate plan before it took place.

In his new memoir, "Let Me Finish," Christie said Baroni and Kelly, who lives in Ramsey and was his deputy chief of staff at the time of the lane closures, "violated my trust and the trust of the people of New Jersey" and "behaved reprehensibly."

Christie also suggested that New Jersey's U.S. attorney at the time, Paul Fishman, a Democrat, "would ride the Bridgegate publicity train all the way to Election Day, keeping the story alive in ways that would still prove damaging to me."

Fishman did not respond to a request for comment on Baroni's sentencing or his handling of the case.

Wildstein avoided prison by pleading guilty and testifying against Baroni and Kelly as the prosecution’s star witness in the nearly two-month trial in fall 2016. All three suggested in testimony that Christie and others in his administration knew of the Bridgegate plan or helped to cover it up.

Cones were moved, chaos ensued

The plot began as Christie was planning to use his rising popularity as the state's outspoken governor as a springboard to the White House. Wildstein, a veteran Republican operative whom Christie had appointed to a senior position under Baroni at the Port Authority, hoped to impress the governor with his political skills.

So Wildstein concocted a plan to snarl traffic in Fort Lee as a way of signaling Christie's unhappiness with Sokolich's refusal to endorse the governor in fall 2013.

The notion that Sokolich, a Democrat, would support Christie was not entirely far-fetched. Several dozen Democratic officials across the state had already backed Christie.

But Sokolich declined.

Just after Labor Day — on the first day of school in Fort Lee — Wildstein, under the guise of a traffic study, ordered Port Authority workers to realign dozens of orange traffic cones at the bridge. Two of three local access lanes were eliminated, leaving only one lane for traffic from Fort Lee and other towns in eastern Bergen County.

The result was chaos.

Cars and trucks quickly backed up across Fort Lee. Police cars, firetrucks and ambulances were hemmed in and could not respond quickly to emergencies.

Sokolich desperately called the Port Authority and even Christie's office for help. But he was ignored.

The gridlock continued each morning for the next four days. Only after numerous complaints were the three access lanes restored.

On Tuesday, in arguing that Baroni should not be granted leniency, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lee Cortes reminded Wigenton of those four tumultuous days, noting that in one case a squad of medical technicians had to get out of their ambulance and run to an emergency.

"The passage of time has not lessened how serious Mr. Baroni’s criminal conduct was," Cortes said.

The story of the traffic gridlock and its political connection to Christie burst into full public view in January 2014 with the publication by NorthJersey.com of an email in which Kelly wrote to Wildstein that it was "time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee."

Wildstein later testified that he viewed the email as a signal from the governor's office that he was to go ahead with his plan to cause massive gridlock in Fort Lee as a way of punishing the borough's mayor.

When told that Baroni planned to give up his appeals and go to prison, Sokolich said the decision was "a sad ending to a a very sad state of events."

"There’s no smile on my face. No one’s jumping up and down at the mayor’s office," said Sokolich, who had considered Baroni a friendly contact, especially in helping Fort Lee deal with the Port Authority and the George Washington Bridge.

Sokolich said he was disappointed that federal prosecutors did not pursue a broader investigation into whether anyone higher in the Christie administration was involved in the Bridgegate plot.

"I don’t think we have everybody." Sokolich said. "There are people who I'm convinced knew about it [and] helped cover it up, and they’re walking."

Kelly declined to comment when reached by phone. But her chief attorney, Michael Critchley, said he did not think Baroni's decision to forgo his appeals and go to prison would hurt her appeal to the Supreme Court.

"We feel we have a strong case," Critchley said, adding that if Kelly is vindicated by the Supreme Court, Baroni would likely be freed from prison.

James Gencarelli, a Fort Lee resident who was blocked by the Bridgegate traffic jams from getting to a job interview, said he did not feel that Baroni or Kelly should serve any time in prison.

The passage of time has lessened Gencarelli's anger at losing out on a job.

“You know the old saying: Don’t beat a dead horse," said Gencarelli, 74. "I think they should pay a hefty fine and make an act of contrition."

Email: kellym@northjersey.com