Dean William Hyland fronted Newcastle District Court via video link from custody on Tuesday when he was sentenced to four years behind bars.

Messages exchanged on end-to-end encryption service Signal reveal the 52-year-old man was a "middle man" on four drug deals between November 2022 and January 2023, including at Bar Beach in Newcastle.

Hyland, a known member of the Life and Death Outlaw Motorcycle Gang, pleaded guilty to supplying a large commercial quantity of methylamphetamine, also known as ice, which can carry life in jail.

He was handed a non-parole period of two years and seven months, and after time already served, will become eligible for parole in November next year.

A police operation began on November 28, 2022, when Hyland met with a person known only as Witness A at a McDonald's carpark at Liverpool before a drug deal went down at Mount Pritchard.

Two other drug deals, including one at Bar Beach, were carried out before the final meeting at the Bar Beach carpark on January 16, 2023.

On that fourth occasion, it turned out to be a "drug rip", where Witness A forked out $30,000 for a substance that was not illegal.

Hyland was arrested in February last year after the State Crime Command's Raptor Squad launched Strike Force Jellingal to investigate ice supply in Sydney.

During sentencing on March 19, Judge Troy Anderson described Hyland as "very much a middle man" who would have made little profit - in money or drugs - due to his "relatively small role in the drug hierarchy".

"The transactions were very unsophisticated ... the degree of planning could be considered to be the bare minimum," Judge Anderson said.

The court heard Hyland had spent a significant period of time in custody earlier in his life but had been doing well in the community, working and keeping off drugs, before tragedy struck his family and his routine was blown up.

A specialist report tendered to the court revealed troubling details in Hyland's background and Judge Anderson found special circumstances in the case.

Hyland had told a psychologist he wanted to "get his shit back together".

Hyland served more than 20 years in jail for the 1998 execution-style murder of Alan Brown at Wyong in 1998.

Hyland's co-accused, also a convicted killer and associate of the Life and Death Outlaw Motorcycle Gang, David Wildsmith, pleaded guilty in August last year to supplying 140 grams of ice to an undercover police officer in Bar Beach car park.

Wildsmith was jailed in December last year for a maximum of two years and three months, with a non-parole period of one year, meaning he will be eligible for release in April 2024.