Mike Johnson was founding dean of a planned law school in Shreveport. It never materialized.

WASHINGTON — Years before House Speaker Mike Johnson was elected to public office, he was the dean of a small Baptist law school that was supposed to take shape in a historic building in downtown Shreveport, but never did.

The establishment of the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law — which was to occupy the decrepit former Joe D. Waggoner Building on Fannin Street — appeared to be a capstone achievement for Alexandria-based Louisiana College.

Administrators boasted the new school would "unashamedly embrace" a "biblical worldview." Instead, it collapsed roughly a decade ago without enrolling students or opening its doors amid infighting by officials, accusations of financial impropriety and difficulty obtaining accreditation, which frightened away would-be donors.

There is no indication that Johnson engaged in any wrongdoing while employed by the private college, now known as Louisiana Christian University. But the episode offers insight into how Johnson — a four-term congressman who emerged from relative obscurity to become House speaker two weeks ago — navigated leadership challenges that echo the chaos, feuding and hard-right politics that have come to define the Republican House majority he now leads.

It's also a reminder of Johnson’s longstanding ties to the Christian right, now a dominant force in GOP politics.

His stint as dean is also a milestone that Johnson does not typically mention when discussing a pre-Congress resume that includes work as litigator for conservative Christian groups that fiercely opposed gay rights and abortion, as well as his brief tenure as a Louisiana lawmaker who pushed legislation that sanctioned discrimination for religious reasons.

Johnson's office did not offer comment for this story, and declined to make him available for an interview. 

"The law school deal was really an anomaly. It was a great idea," said Gene Mills, a longtime friend of Johnson's who heads the Louisiana Family Forum, a conservative group that is active in state politics. "But due to issues that were out of Mike's hands, that came unraveled."

Inaugural dean

J. Michael Johnson Esq., as he was then known professionally, was hired in the summer of 2010 to be the "inaugural dean" of the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law, named for a Southern Baptist Convention luminary who was instrumental in the faith group's turn to the political right in the 1980s. The board of trustees who brought Johnson onboard included Tony Perkins, a longtime mentor and former Louisiana legislator who is now the president of the Family Research Council in Washington, a powerhouse Christian lobbying organization.

In early public remarks, Johnson predicted a bright future for the school, and college officials hoped it would someday rival the law school at Liberty University, the evangelical institution founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell. (In addition to serving in Congress, Johnson these days is a part-time professor at Liberty University’s Helms School of Government.)

"From a pure feasibility standpoint," Johnson said, "I'm not sure how this can fail.” He told Alexandria’s Daily Town Talk that it looked "like the perfect storm for our law school."

Reality soon intruded.

For several years before Johnson's arrival, Louisiana College had been in a state of turmoil following a board takeover by conservatives who felt the school had become too liberal. They restricted academic freedoms, including the potential firing of instructors whose curriculum touched upon sexual morality or anything contradictory to the Bible.

The school's president and other faculty resigned, and the college was placed on probation by an accreditation agency.

But a shale oil boom in the area brought a wave of prosperity from newly enriched donors. And the school officials, led by then-President Joe Aguillard, had grand ambitions beyond just the law school. They included opening a medical school, a film school and making a movie adaptation of the 1960s pastoral comedy TV show "Green Acres."

Bringing Johnson into the school's leadership helped further those ambitions. As dean of the proposed law school, Johnson embarked on a major fundraising campaign and described a big-dollar event in Houston with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, then-Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Pressler, in a 2011 alumni magazine.

But Johnson struggled to draw an adequate amount of cash while drama percolated behind the scenes. That culminated in a flurry of lawsuits, including a whistleblower claim by the school's vice president, who accused Aguillard of misappropriating money and lying to the board, according to court records.

A law firm brought in to conduct an investigation later concluded in a 2013 report that Aguillard had inappropriately diverted funds to a school he hoped to build in Africa, as well as for personal expenses.