There's not a great way to "convert" client side to server side in ServiceNow. I believe you are going to have to use a script include for this.
Recommendation
If you are pulling API data into a drop down, it may cause issues with usability and may be better to store the data in the instance rather than fetch it every time someone wants to change a value. I recommend doing this so that if the API server goes down, users don't have issues in SNow, also acts as redundancy for both security & speed.
Async GlideAjax path
It is possible to use GlideAjax to call a server side script include that would do the validation & API calls.
For that you would want to use asynchronous GlideAjax, especially if it works along side APIs
var ga = new GlideAjax('some_script_include');
ga.addParam('sysparm_name', 'SomeFunction');
ga.addParm('sysparm_someparm','someValue');
ga.getXMLWait(ParseResponse);
function ParseResponse(response) {
var answer = response.responseXML.documentElement.getAttribute("answer");
return answer;
}
Limitations: getXMLWait() apparently doesn't work in scoped application (per SNow Community: https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_question&sys_id=088032badbd057042e247a9e0f96192a which also helped inform this answer)