PITTSBURGH — A judge dropped contempt charges Friday against the brother of state Sen. Jane Orie for accusing prosecutors of forging defense exhibits that led to a mistrial in the senator’s public corruption trial last week.

Instead, Allegheny County Judge Jeffrey Manning warned Jack Orie — as well as defense attorneys, prosecutors, and witnesses on both sides — to stop talking about the case in the media and to abide by a gag order he issued in December. A Pittsburgh newspaper had reported Jack Orie’s comments.

Manning told Jack Orie and his attorney, Ron Barber, that he felt “like a parent of quibbling children. I don’t care who started it; I just want it to stop on everybody’s part.”

Manning declared a mistrial a week ago on charges against Sen. Orie, 49, a McCandless Republican. She remains charged with using her state-paid staff to do political campaign work for herself and her sister, state Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin. Melvin isn’t charged, but a third sister was also on trial on charges she conspired to use the senator’s staff on Melvin’s 2009 election to the state’s highest court. That sister, Janine Orie, 56, is suspended from her job as Melvin’s aide.

The jury was in its second day of deliberations when Manning declared a mistrial. A prosecutor had showed him two defense documents that were used to undermine the credibility of the key witness, Sen. Orie’s former chief-of-staff, Jamie Pavlot. Her signature was on both documents, but she claimed to have never seen them, and Manning agreed with a handwriting expert that Pavlot’s signature had been cut and pasted.

Jack Orie was quoted Wednesday in the Pittsburgh newspaper as saying prosecutors forged the documents to force the mistrial “because they knew they were going to lose.”

The newspaper also quoted Jack Orie as saying he was upset that Manning, in declaring the mistrial, went on a “rant” in which he suggested the defense altered the documents. Though Manning told the senator’s attorney, William Costopoulos, that he didn’t believe Costopoulos did anything wrong, Manning went on to tell Costopoulos to look “in his own house” for the culprit.

The DA’s office apparently believes the Orie camp is responsible, too, as they obtained a search warrant Wednesday and seized 28 more documents that Sen. Orie testified about. The senator testified the documents contain her handwritten instructions to Pavlot and other staff that they were not to do campaign work on state time — or do comp work for doing so — or otherwise show that Pavlot directly supervised the staff, not the senator.