Gerund clause

Hi, recently I came across this sentence:

James finally got into his dream college, and he was looking forward to the first day ritual.

Can we change this sentence into a gerund clause as follows:

James finally got into his dream college, looking forward to the first day ritual.

I don’t think these two actions (entering school/looking forward to something) happen at the same time, nor do I believe the semantic association between the two fulfils the requirement for such a construct, though grammatically it seems fine.

So what do you think? I’d really appreciate it if you could help me out with this.

No, I would not change the sentence in that way. It would create a participial clause, but the way, not a gerund clause.
But as you suspect, this would indicate some sort of concurrency, which does not correspond to the original meaning.
What you could do, if you wanted to shorten it a little, is to change "was looking" to "looked".

It doesn’t work in that situation. The two statements in the original version are independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction.

James finally got into his dream college,
and he was looking forward to the first day ritual.
— He began looking forward to his first day as soon as (i.e. immediately ) he discovered that he’d been awarded a place there.

James finally got into his dream college,
looking forward to the first-day ritual.
— This says that (a) being told that he’d been awarded a place at the college and (b) looking forward to his first day there were simultaneous, which doesn’t make much sense. And, as Edinburgher says, there is no noun/gerund clause – it’s a present participle clause serving as an adverbial of manner.

Thank you so much, Edinburgher and lingobingo. I feel the same with the odd semantics here. Just a quick follow-up, is it right to change the original sentence into this:

Having finally got into his dream college, James was looking forward to the first day ritual.

That's fine.

Thank you everyone. I really appreciate your help😀

Your phrase "Having finally got into his dream college" in #4 is fine in British English. But you may have to change "got" to "gotten" if you want it to sound acceptable to American English ears.