NEW YORK — A drug dealer from Queens admitted Monday to taking part in the 2002 slaying of Run-DMC legend Jam Master Jay, telling a judge he helped a pair of killers get into the rapper’s music studio to murder him.

Jay Bryant, 52, pleaded guilty to firearm-related murder in Brooklyn Federal Court Monday, taking a negotiated plea deal that means he’ll face 15 to 20 years total for his role in the killing, as well as for drug and gun charges he already pleaded guilty to in December 2023.

He had already faced a mandatory minimum of 15 years in the drug and gun case.

Bryant is the only defendant to admit his guilt in the rap icon’s decades-old killing. He didn’t go to trial alongside co-defendants Karl Jordan Jr. and Ronald Washington in 2024, but his presence in the Hollis music studio was hotly debated throughout the trial.

The feds said Bryant got into the studio and opened a rear door for Jordan and Washington, while the duo’s defense team painted Bryant as the shooter, noting that his DNA was found in a hat on the scene and he confessed to an uncle about being the killer.

On Monday, Bryant admitted to the government’s version of events. “In 2002, in Queens, New York, I agreed with others who were known drug dealers and involved in a drug deal with Jason Mizell to possess and distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine,” he told Magistrate Judge Peggy Cross-Goldenberg, referring to Jay by his given name.

“On Oct. 30, 2002, in Queens, New York, I helped them kill Jason Mizell by helping gain entry to the recording studio. I knew a gun was going to be used to shoot Jason Mizell. I knew what I was doing was wrong and a crime.”

Bryant, who appeared in court in green jail scrubs with a white long-sleeve shirt underneath, flashed a thumbs-up to his stepfather at the end of the proceeding. His sentencing date has not yet been set.

“More than two decades after the cold-blooded execution-style killing of Mr. Mizell, an exhaustive investigation revealed Bryant’s role and today he finally admitted his guilt,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella said Monday.

A jury convicted Jordan and Washington of Jay’s killing but last December, Brooklyn District Court Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall overturned Jordan’s guilty verdict and acquitted him. The judge ruled in a bombshell decision that prosecutors failed to prove that he killed Jay over a drug trafficking beef, a condition of the federal charges he faced. The feds are appealing that decision.

The judge did not overturn Washington’s conviction.

Jordan still faces several pending drug distribution and firearm offenses, which were split off from the murder case. Earlier this month, DeArcy Hall agreed to release him on $1 million bond, secured by 17 family members, but that release is on hold as prosecutors appeal the bond ruling.

Bryant was added to the case in 2023, eight months before the trial began. In December 2023, he pleaded guilty in a separate federal drug trafficking and gun possession case.

Jay was playing a football video game in his second-floor studio on Merrick Blvd. in Hollis, Queens, when a gunman shot him in the head.

The five other people in the studio kept quiet for decades before finally taking the stand at Jordan and Washington’s trial. A key witness, Uriel “Tony” Rincon, said he was inches away and saw Jordan’s face before Jordan blasted a hole in his leg and shot Jay in the head.

Rincon told the Daily News in 2007 he was inches away but never saw the killer’s face. But when he took the stand, he fingered Jordan, who was the rapper’s godson, as the shooter and said Washington was standing guard over the studio door.

_____

©2026 New York Daily News. Visit at nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.