A SELLOUT crowd and a $300,000 payday awaited the comedian Katt Williams one November evening two years ago. It was to be his first performance at Carnegie Hall.

Just one problem: Mr. Williams was in jail.

He had been arrested that morning with members of his entourage at 28th Street and Broadway on gun possession charges. The show’s promoters were poised to pull the plug unless Mr. Williams’s lawyer, Charles A. Ross, could guarantee that he would appear.

For Mr. Ross, there was only one person to call: Ira.

Ira Judelson, bail bondsman, is an inevitable entry in the BlackBerrys of New York defense lawyers, an A.T.M. for desperate rappers, actors, athletes, executives and madams with pocketbooks much fatter than his.

When Mr. Ross called that November afternoon, Mr. Judelson did what he does. He talked with two of Mr. Williams’s managers about pledging their homes as collateral, ran checks to see which had more equity, then had the owner of that one sign over the property.