ALBANY – After two tumultuous years in the Legislature, members of the Assembly and Senate are preparing to re-elect their top leaders for another term.

In a meeting today at the Capitol, Assembly Democrats are expected to nominate Sheldon Silver of Manhattan, who first became speaker in 1994, to continue through 2006.

Senate Republicans will huddle to pick their majority leader on Thursday, and there is little doubt that they will stick with Joseph Bruno of Rensselaer County, who has been serving in that position since 1995.

Both men will be formally elected at the beginning of the new legislative session in January.

Messrs. Bruno and Silver are holding on to power despite recent upheaval in both chambers.

Three lawmakers were convicted of crimes – Gloria Davis of the Bronx and Roger Green of Brooklyn in the Assembly, and Guy Velella of the Bronx in the Senate. Davis and Velella spent time in jail, while Mr. Green, after pleading guilty to padding his Assembly expense account, was returned to office earlier this month.

Last year, against Governor Pataki’s wishes, Messrs. Bruno and Silver joined forces to raise taxes and overrode 120 of the governor’s ensuing vetoes. This year, the Assembly and Senate passed the latest budget in history – again without the governor’s cooperation – and so far have allowed his vetoes to stand.

The calls for reform at Albany have gotten louder, including a report this summer from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School that labeled New York’s state government the most dysfunctional in the nation.

Several of the Legislature’s usually unbeatable incumbents paid a price in the recent elections, including four sitting members of the Assembly and at least two senators.

The year was particularly hard on Mr. Bruno. He started the year heading a Republican majority of 38-24. In January, depending on the outcome of a close Westchester race, his majority will shrink to 35-27 or 34-28.

He lost the third Republican seat on Tuesday, when Senator Nancy Larraine Hoffmann of the Syracuse area conceded to her Democratic challenger, David Valesky. Another race, between Senator Nicholas Spano of Westchester County and a Democratic county legislator, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, was still too close to call yesterday. Mr. Spano was leading by 175 votes with 3,500 paper ballots yet to be counted.

Mr. Silver, meanwhile, added yet one more seat to his already overwhelming 103-47 majority.

“The speaker has the overwhelming support of the conference,” Assemblyman Steven Sanders said yesterday. “As a political leader the record is very clear. He has done amazingly well. The Democratic majority has enjoyed unprecedented success around the state. … That’s one of the things that a leader is measured on.”

The government affairs director of the Business Council of New York State, Elliott Shaw, said most previous speakers and majority leaders have died in office, retired voluntarily, or accepted appointment to higher office.

“To a large extent the leaders of the houses of the Legislature get to pick the time of their own choosing of when they’re going to step down,” Mr. Shaw said. An exception was Mr. Bruno’s predecessor, the late Ralph Marino of Long Island, who was forced out by Mr. Bruno shortly before Mr. Pataki took office in 1995 in a coup orchestrated by the new governor and Senator D’Amato.

Messrs. Bruno, Silver, and Pataki have been Albany’s ruling triumvirate ever since, much longer than any other threesome. Mr. Silver, in fact, is the second-longest-serving speaker in the history of the Assembly, behind Oswald Heck, a Republican of Schenectady County who served from 1937 to 1959. In 2000, Mr. Silver survived an ouster attempt by his former majority leader, Michael Bragman of the Syracuse area, who left the Assembly the next year.