ALBANY – Recent campaign filings by the state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, helped burnish the gubernatorial front-runner’s image as a friend of trial lawyers. Mr. Spitzer, who maintains a double-digit lead in a theoretical race next year against Governor Pataki, raised more than $400,000 over the past six months from attorneys nationwide.

But a closer look at Mr. Spitzer’s contributors shows another industry outpacing even trial lawyers in donations to his campaign: According to an analysis by the Republican State Committee, hedge fund executives have showered more than a half million dollars on the Spitzer campaign over the past six months, with a major spike in industry gifts occurring over the last two months.

Indeed, according to the committee, the Spitzer campaign received checks totaling $357,150 from hedge fund executives in the last two months alone, as compared to $81,834 from trial lawyers during the same period. The uptick started June 9, the same day a former Bank of America broker, Theodore Sihpol, was acquitted of charges brought against him by Mr. Spitzer in a two-year probe of the mutual fund industry.

Mr. Spitzer’s investigation into the mutual fund industry centers on the practice of late-trading, by which some investors buy mutual fund shares after the market’s close. The probe disclosed that large mutual fund clients, such as hedge funds, had benefited most from the practice, capitalizing on after-hours fluctuations in price while others were shut out.

The probe, which followed an earlier financial industry investigation by Mr. Spitzer of investment banks and stock analysts, has resulted in a string of high-profile settlements, including a $125 million settlement yesterday by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, raising the would-be governor’s public profile as he seeks the near certain nomination of his party for the governor’s race next year.

Yet even as Mr. Spitzer’s reputation has grown from the expansion of his inquiries into the financial services sector, critics have begun to question whether his campaign account should be enlarged by contributions from the very industries he has sought to regulate. They say financial service executives may be inclined to contribute funds as a way of avoiding scrutiny by investigators in Mr. Spitzer’s office.

One outspoken critic of Mr. Spitzer’s fund-raising practices is the chairman of the State Republican Committee, Stephen Minarik, who has for months questioned the type of contributors the attorney general has attracted to his fold. Mr. Minarik has until recently focused on the trial lawyers who have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Mr. Spitzer and raised questions, for Mr. Minarik, as to whether Mr. Spitzer can be expected as governor to advocate for industries – including financial services – that trial lawyers target.

The state committee’s latest findings have raised fresh questions among state Republicans as to whether Mr. Spitzer should be raising money from the financial services industry at all.

“Eliot Spitzer should not be accepting contributions from industries that he’s regulating,” Mr. Minarik said. “He’s decided to go after some hedge funds and take money from others. This is wrong. Where do you draw the line? This is another case that raises serious ethical questions about Eliot Spitzer.”

A spokesman for Mr. Spitzer, Darren Dopp, denied that contributions from hedge fund operators represented a conflict of interest.

“The standard that we try to set – and it’s a standard that no one else comes close to – is that we would never accept a contribution from an individual or a company with a pending business matter,” Mr. Dopp said. “But that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t take a contribution from anyone in an industry with a pending business matter.”

Mr. Dopp explained the contributions from the hedge fund industry as a sign that many hedge fund executives admire Mr. Spitzer for his investigations.

“It’s a large industry and there are a lot of people who have made a lot of money who are fans of Mr. Spitzer’s work,” Mr. Dopp said, “and so as long as there are no pending business matters before our office, it is not inappropriate in any way. I know Mr. Spitzer’s record is clear that whenever there is a matter to be investigated, he investigates it aggressively and thoroughly, and that’s never been more true than with Wall Street.”

Among recent hedge fund executives who have contributed to Mr. Spitzer’s campaign are Ephraim and Catherine Gildor, of Gildor Investments, who gave $50,000 the day of the Sihpol acquittal; Barry Rosenstein, of Jana Partners, who gave $50,100 on June 21; Lizanne Rosenstein, of Jana Partners, who gave $50,100 the same day as her husband; Lawrence Golub, of Golub Capital, who gave $30,100 on July 1; Karen Finerman, of Metropolitan Capital, who gave $30,100 on July 7, and Deborah Hymowitz and Mark Fife of EnTrust, who together gave $50,000 on July 11.

Total gifts from hedge fund executives since January exceed $550,000, or just under 10% of all contributions to Mr. Spitzer’s total contributions since January of $6.2 million, according to filings with the New York State Board of Elections. Mr. Spitzer’s total war chest, according to his campaign’s biannual filing on July 20, was $12.3 million.