By Karen Freifeld

NEW YORK, Dec 5 (Reuters) - The founder of a Texas pension consulting firm who pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a "pay to play" scheme at the New York state pension fund will not have to serve jail time, a state judge ruled on Wednesday.

Saul Meyer, 42, pleaded guilty in 2009 and agreed to cooperate in the New York investigation, which sent former state comptroller Alan Hevesi to prison last year. Meyer admitted he paid Hevesi's chief political consultant $300,000 in return for getting money from the pension fund to invest.

Meyer, a former partner at Dallas-based Aldus Equity, was the eighth and last defendant to be sentenced in the years-long probe, which led to scrutiny of public pension funds nationwide.

"What you did was obviously unacceptable," New York state Supreme Court Justice Lewis Bart Stone said Wednesday before sentencing Meyer to a conditional discharge, meaning he would avoid prison.

Stone said Meyer tried to make up for his wrongs by cooperating with the probe in New York and a similar investigation in New Mexico. Besides a felony conviction for securities fraud, he said Meyer paid $1 million in restitution.

Hevesi, 72, was the highest-ranking official convicted in the New York case. He is scheduled to be released from prison by Dec. 19.

The case is People of New York v. Saul Meyer, Superior Court Information 4755/2009, New York state Supreme Court, New York County.

For Saul Meyer: Paul Shechtman of Zuckerman Spaeder

For New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman: Rachel Doft

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