Mayor Bloomberg and the Jets celebrated a decisive court victory yesterday after a state Supreme Court judge ruled that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s sale of air rights over its Hudson Yards rail yards to the National Football League team for $250 million was legal. It was a major step in a process that still has several moving parts, including a vote scheduled for this afternoon in Albany by the Public Authorities Control Board.

“We have removed all the impediments to the stadium, and the Olympic bid is gathering momentum as it, too, enters the final stretch,” the president of the Jets, Jay Cross, said at a briefing with reporters. The New York Sports and Convention Center, as the Jets’ planned domed stadium is officially known, would double as an Olympic stadium.

A 3-0 vote by the Public Authorities Control Board, a little-known body controlled by Governor Pataki, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, approving a state expenditure of $300 million is required for the $2 billion stadium project to proceed on schedule.

Proponents of the stadium have said the board must vote today because the International Olympic Committee is releasing on Monday a report evaluating the five cities vying to be host of the 2012 Olympics. Thirty days later, on July 6 in Singapore, the Olympic committee is scheduled to award the Summer Games to Paris, London, New York, Madrid, or Moscow.

“The time is now for action by the state,” the executive director of the NYC2012, Jay Kriegel, said yesterday. “The New York City bid has an excellent chance of winning if we get the stadium.”

Late yesterday, Messrs. Silver and Bruno were said to be weighing their options for today’s vote. Both legislative leaders said they would send representatives to the meeting, but they might still be able to delay a vote by requesting that the governor take the stadium issue off the table or by refusing to second the motion to approve the stadium.

At a briefing with reporters yesterday, Mr. Silver dismissed the urgency of voting at today’s board meeting, calling the Olympic report Monday an “artificial deadline.”

“The whole purpose of the Friday meeting was to meet the deadline for that report,” he said. “Well, that report now, they say, is already printed, and you will not meet the deadline for that report, so there is no urgency anymore.”

Mr. Silver also said he would consider delaying today’s meeting. “At some point, I might, yes, at some point I might,” the Manhattan Democrat said. “Again, the artificial deadline clearly is no deadline anymore.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Bruno, Lisa Black, said the senator, a Republican from Rensselaer, would send his budget director, Mary-Louise Mallick, who is his designated representative for the Public Authorities Control Board, to the meeting today. What she will do there was unclear. Mr. Bruno “is still reviewing the judge’s decision and counsel is considering the options,” Ms. Black said last night.

Mr. Bruno sent letters yesterday to several Olympic officials, including the chairman of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, and the chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee, Peter Ueberroth, saying he would support building a stadium if the International Olympic Committee picks New York as host city.

“I will give my support to ensuring that if New York is selected, we will build a stadium and other facilities that are necessary to comply with the city’s bid proposal,” Mr. Bruno wrote.

Mr. Kriegel dismissed Mr. Bruno’s letter as being “in violation of” International Olympic Committee rules.

“The rules require not a letter from someone, not a verbal commitment, but actual approval,” he said.

Mr. Bloomberg, responding to assertions in recent months by Mr. Bruno and Mr. Silver that they still have questions about the project, said: “If you have questions after all of this time, either you weren’t asking or you weren’t listening.”

Meanwhile, the state comptroller, Alan Hevesi, also renewed his opposition to the stadium plans. In a letter to Messrs. Pataki, Silver, and Bruno, Mr. Hevesi said that the state has not identified where in its budget it will get the $300 million it has agreed to invest in the stadium, and that the New York City Council is likely to block Mr. Bloomberg’s plan to use payments in lieu of taxes, known as Pilots, to finance the city’s $300 million commitment to the stadium.

“The project has already grown in cost from $1.4 billion to $2.2 billion,” Mr. Hevesi warned in his letter. “In addition, the state and city could incur additional costs from the conversion of the project into an Olympic stadium.”

In a strongly worded decision issued in Manhattan, Justice Herman Cahn said the MTA board’s unanimous vote March 31 to award the Hudson Yards development rights to the Jets was legal. The Jets’ offer was $150 million less than the bid by Madison Square Garden.

“An analysis of the MSG arguments and the MTA powers leads to the conclusion that the MTA did not act in an arbitrary and capricious matter,” the judge wrote. “While MSG focuses on the dollar figure that it offered, compared to the dollar figure in the Jets’ proposal, in arguing that the MTA acted arbitrarily and capriciously, that dollar figure is not the sole criterion that the MTA was required to consider.”

Justice Cahn said other factors, including “the long-term projections of increased ridership, the timetable anticipated for construction, the effect of each proposal on the value of the Eastern Rail Yards, and the potential value of the future TDRs” were also important, so long as those considerations “did not lack a rational basis.” The judge’s reference to TDRs, transferable development rights, has to do with MTA officials’ plans ultimately to sell excess development rights from the rail yards. The assumption is that developers will pay the MTA hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange for the right to build higher buildings at other sites.

Madison Square Garden blasted the MTA’s sale of the rail yards to the Jets as an “inside deal” and said in a statement that Justice Cahn’s ruling would be overturned on appeal.

“In the court of public opinion, the overwhelming majority of New Yorkers stand together in opposition to this waste of taxpayer funds,” the statement from the Garden, which is owned by Cablevision, said.

Justice Cahn dismissed the suits brought by all four plaintiffs, who also include the public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum; the New York Public Interest Research Group; the Straphangers Campaign, and three Assembly members who joined with the Hell’s Kitchen Neighborhood Association.

In his decision, Justice Cahn delayed until the close of day Tuesday the transfer of the air rights over the rail yard to the Jets, to give the plaintiffs time to appeal.

The New York Public Interest Research Group and the Straphangers Campaign, which were joined in their suit by the Transport Workers Union Local 100, Common Cause/NY, and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, said they would appeal the decision.