MOSCOW - A court in southern Russia on Thursday cut the prison sentence of a U.S. Fulbright scholar jailed on a drug conviction from 37 months to one year, his lawyer's office said.

The regional court in Voronezh was conducting a procedural review of the conviction of John Tobin of Ridgefield, Connecticut, on charges of illegally obtaining, possessing and distributing marijuana.

He has insisted on his innocence.

Court officials could not immediately be reached. A secretary in the office of Tobin's attorney, Maxim Bayev, said that the court had made the decision to reduce the sentence. She spoke on condition of anonymity.

Tobin was doing political research at a university in Voronezh, about 300 miles south of Moscow, when he was arrested outside a local nightclub in January.

The case attracted wider attention after the Federal Security Service, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, alleged that Tobin had connections with U.S. intelligence. Tobin, a graduate of Middlebury College, had studied at the elite Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California.

No espionage charges were filed, and Tobin said in e-mails to friends and the Fulbright program that he was framed because he refused to become a spy for Russia.

His case has been raised with Russian officials by Secretary of State Colin Powell, and his representative in the U.S. Congress, James Maloney, has traveled to Russia twice to press for his release.