NEW YORK — A Queens man accused of fatally shooting Run-DMC co-founder Jam Master Jay came one step closer to freedom Monday, months after a federal judge overturned his murder conviction in a bombshell decision.

Karl Jordan Jr., 42, who has been locked up since his arrest in 2020, still faces several pending drug distribution and firearm offenses, which were split off from the murder case.

But he’s now set to be released on a $1 million bond, secured by 17 of his family members — after spending more than five years in MDC Brooklyn since his indictment for the rap icon’s cold case 2002 murder, Brooklyn Federal Court Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall ruled Monday.

To the disappointment of his family waiting in the courtroom, though, that release will have to wait until at least Friday. The judge put a stay on his release to give prosecutors to the end of the week to appeal her bond ruling. If they appeal by Friday, he’ll have to wait for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on it.

DeArcy Hall ruled Monday that she didn’t believe Jordan was a flight risk, and that any evidence he might be a danger to the community comes from alleged acts from than two decades ago.

Jordan, who has been housed in the MDC Brooklyn federal jail since his 2020 arrest, was stabbed 18 times in a Feb. 22, 2025, gang-related fight in the troubled Sunset Park lockup.

“At the end of the day, sir, bond is about you giving me your word,” she said, and he responded, “Yeah, I’m aware of that.”

She then warned him, “This is also about you understanding what my word means. ... I am giving you my word here today that if Mr. Jordan proves me wrong, I will not hesitate in the least to ensure that the government acts on the collateral in this bond package.”

“You all know that I do not play,” DeArcy Hall told Jordan’s family.

The suretors include Marilyn Gonzales, Jordan’s aunt, and Abdul Springer, his cousin, who both put up their house; and Jordan’s father, Karl Jordan Sr., who put up property he owns in South Carolina, according to court filings.

“Mr. Jordan, along with his family and friends, deeply appreciates the court’s decision granting his release on bond,” his lawyer, Michael Hueston, said. “After 5 1/2 years, they are grateful for the opportunity to be reunited and to move forward together.”

Jay, born Jason Mizell, was playing the football video game Madden in his second-floor studio on Merrick Boulevard in Hollis, Queens, on Oct. 30, 2002, when a gunman shot him in the head. He was 37.

The five other people in the studio kept quiet for decades — out of fear, federal prosecutors said — until finally taking the stand in Brooklyn Federal Court in early 2024.

A jury found Jordan guilty in February 2024, but DeArcy Hall overturned that verdict and acquitted him in December 2025 — ruling that the government failed to prove that he killed Jay over a drug trafficking beef, a condition of the federal charges he faced.

Federal prosecutors are appealing that decision.

DeArcy Hall did not overturn his co-defendant Ronald Washington’s guilty verdict, ruling the government established Washington had a drug motive.

Prosecutors contended that Jay recruited Jordan and Washington to sell coke for him in Baltimore, but the deal went sour when the rapper’s drug connection had bad blood with Washington and threatened to kill him. The government alleged that the two men sought to kill Jay, steal his drugs and take over the drug distribution plot in Maryland.

Jay’s friend, Uriel “Tony” Rincon, who told the New York Daily News in 2007 he was inches away but never saw the killer’s face, broke years of silence to name Jordan, who was the rapper’s godson, as the shooter, and to say Washington was standing guard over the studio door.

And Lydia High, Jay’s business manager, testified that she saw Jay’s face turn from a smile to a look of horrified shock as the killer embraced him, then shot him point-blank in the head. Washington, she said, pointed a gun at her and ordered her to the ground during the chaos.

She didn’t name Jordan during her testimony, but she described how the shooter had a neck tattoo similar to Jordan’s.

“The government fails to identify evidence that Jordan was dissatisfied by his portion of revenue from drug sales, was in contact with any supplier, or otherwise made arrangements to carry on Mizell’s operation,” the judge wrote in December. “From what evidence, then, could the jury have reasonably inferred that Jordan sought to retaliate against Mizell for the failure of the Baltimore deal? There was none.”

If the release on bond goes through, DeArcy Hall told Jordan, “I wish you luck. And will stay out of trouble.”

He quietly agreed.

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