A Christian college in suburban Chicago has removed the name of former US House speaker Dennis Hastert from an academic research centre.

Wheaton college announced on Sunday that what had been known as the J Dennis Hastert center for economics, government and public policy was now just named after the colleges.

The centre was established in 2007 when Hastert stepped down from Congress after eight years as speaker.

Hastert resigned from the research centre’s board on Friday, one day after the release of a federal indictment accusing him of violating banking laws by agreeing to pay $3.5m in hush money to keep a person silent about unspecified “prior misconduct”.

On Friday, anonymous law enforcement sources told a number of news organisations Hastert had made the payments to conceal a sexual relationship with a man.

“It was sex,” said one official, to the Los Angeles Times.

Hastert, a former and much-loved high school wrestling coach in Yorkville, Illinois, has also resigned from the Chicago-based CME Group, parent of several exchanges, and the Washington lobbying firm Dickstein Shapiro.

He was speaker of the House of Representatives from 1999 to 2007, when he resigned from Congress after Democrats gained control of the congressional chamber. He joined Dickstein Shapiro in 2008, as a senior advisor.