PROVIDENCE — The former employee who accused Gerald R. Lynch of sexually assaulting him testified “forthrightly and did so in the court’s opinion in a credible fashion,” the judge in the Lynch case said yesterday.

The testimony provided sufficient evidence to support the guilty verdict that the jury returned last month, Judge Edward C. Clifton said.

As a result, Lynch, a well-known political figure who until last spring was director of the East Providence Boys & Girls Club, isn’t entitled to a new trial on the sexual assault charges, Clifton said.

The ruling, which Clifton made from the bench in Superior Court, set the stage for Lynch’s sentencing.

The former East Providence City Council member faces a term of 10 years to life in prison when he returns to court for sentencing on Feb. 19.

Lynch, 62, of 23 Morra Way, Rumford, was found guilty of four counts of first-degree sexual assault, all of them stemming from the oral sex that occurred when he owned a flower shop in Pawtucket and the victim, now a man about 37, worked there as a young teenager.

During a 40-minute hearing before Clifton yesterday morning, defense lawyer Lise J. Gescheidt argued that the victim’s testimony wasn’t credible and that he didn’t offer the evidence of force necessary to support a conviction for sexual assault.

Special Assistant Attorney General Maureen Keough disputed that. “There is evidence of force, and I would suggest that evidence is credible and would support the verdict,” she said.

Clifton agreed, saying the witness’s credibility had withstood days of “excruciating cross-examination.”

Clifton said he was satisfied that, “from the evidence introduced, and the reasonable inference from that evidence, and the weight of that evidence,” that he would have reached a verdict similar to the one returned by the jury.