A businessman once accused of bribing officials in Kazakhstan with tens of millions of dollars was praised by a federal judge in New York yesterday as a Cold War hero — for helping thousands of Soviet Jews to migrate to the West and playing a key role in secret talks between the United States and the Soviet Union.

US District Judge William H. Pauley III noted the extraordinary past of James Giffen, 69 — and sentenced him to time served in exchange for a guilty plea to a misdemeanor tax count.

Investigators and prosecutors, Pauley observed, did not know about the classified information when Giffen was originally charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, along with mail, wire-fraud and money-laundering statutes.