Mr. Christie faces the specter of a lengthy and embarrassing criminal trial overshadowing the 2016 presidential campaign, in which the star witness — David Wildstein, a onetime Christie loyalist who pleaded guilty on Friday to two counts of conspiracy — still maintains the governor was aware of the lane-closing plot as it happened.

Even so, Mr. Christie treated the outcome of the federal investigation as a personal exoneration.

“Today’s charges make clear that what I’ve said from day one is true,” the governor posted on Twitter. “I had no knowledge or involvement in the planning or execution of this act.”

But exoneration of the man is not exoneration of his leadership style.

Mr. Christie and his staff have a history of punishing those who have crossed him. There was the state college professor whose budget was vetoed after he failed to sign off on a project that Mr. Christie favored. The mayor of Jersey City whose meetings with the governor’s staff were summarily canceled hours after he said he would not endorse Mr. Christie’s re-election. The attempt, even before the lane closings, to freeze out the mayor of Fort Lee for failing to back Mr. Christie.

“There was a level of arrogance,” Ms. Harrison said, “that would seem to be coming from the top down.”

Mr. Christie, whose bipartisan popularity and fund-raising prowess were once the envy of his party, is now a man without a clear path to the Republican nomination. His poll numbers are sagging badly. Voters openly taunt him at public events about the bridge episode. Donors fret about his viability. And longtime allies are defecting to rival campaigns.

Two weeks ago, State Senator Joseph M. Kyrillos of New Jersey, a trusted Christie friend who served as chairman of his 2009 campaign for governor, declared his support for Jeb Bush.