NEW ORLEANS

He entered New Orleans City Hall as a cool and confidant self-styled reformer, won fame there as a passionate, if profane, critic of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina and exited under suspicion.

Next stop for former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin: federal prison.

Nagin, a 58-year-old former cable television manager, was sentenced to 10 years in prison Wednesday for bribery, money laundering, fraud and tax violations stemming from his two terms as New Orleans’ mayor from 2002-2010. If the Federal Bureau of Prisons goes along with the recommendation of U.S. District Judge Helen Berrigan, he will do the time at a federal lockup in Oakdale, Louisiana — where former Gov. Edwin Edwards spent some of his own 10-year sentence, and where a current resident is Nagin’s fellow New Orleans Democrat, disgraced former U.S. Rep. William Jefferson.

Prosecutors had been pushing for a sentence in the neighborhood of 20 years for Nagin, convicted in February of 20 criminal counts. The crimes, his repeated lies about them, the damage heaped on a city reeling from the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina and a longtime reputation for corruption — all merited more prison time, prosecutors said at his Friday sentencing hearing.

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