For a time, Nadine Menendez was a powerful senator’s plus one.

She dined with intelligence officials and the wives of ambassadors, shuttling frequently between New Jersey and Washington, where her husband, Robert Menendez, was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

That life is gone.

On Thursday, a federal judge in Manhattan is expected to sentence Ms. Menendez, 58, for her role in a complex scheme to trade her husband’s political clout for cash, gold and a Mercedes-Benz. The sentencing comes several months after Mr. Menendez, a Democrat who represented New Jersey in Congress for three decades, began serving an 11-year prison term.

Prosecutors have recommended that Ms. Menendez be sentenced to at least seven years for her role as a conduit for messages and bribes to her husband, and for arranging meetings with Egyptian officials.

Her lawyers have argued that a sentence of one year and one day is appropriate, citing her history of enduring abusive relationships and a childhood in wartime Lebanon.

The government and Ms. Menendez’s family and friends have presented starkly different versions of her capacity to have played a central role in such a sprawling international conspiracy.

The couple were tried separately after Ms. Menendez was diagnosed with breast cancer, and testimony in both trials took jurors from Cairo to Havana to Beirut, laying bare a global halal meat monopoly propped up with the senator’s support and used as a source of bribes. Both were convicted of each of the charges they faced.