Former Reagan-era Justice Department official Douglas Kmiec was sworn in yesterday as ambassador to Malta at a ceremony that included “strange religious/political bedfellows,” the U.S. News & World Report’s God & Country blog reported.

Douglas Kmiec (Pepperdine University)

The event for Kmiec, a conservative Roman Catholic who headed the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel in the 1980s, attracted several prominent Catholic friends, including liberal activist actor Martin Sheen, Catholic University president Rev. David M. O’Connell and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, a member of the court’s conservative wing.

“It felt like an official diocesan event with a twist,” God & Country reporter Dan Gilgoff wrote.

Sheen, who played a Democratic president in The West Wing, recited the Pledge of Allegiance. He and Kmiec attended the same California church.

O’Connell offered a prayer for his former colleague, who was once dean of the Catholic University law school and was most recently a law professor at Pepperdine University.

Alito administered the oath to Kmiec, with whom he’d worked during the Reagan administration.

Kmiec was a Mitt Romney supporter in the Republican presidential primaries. But he switched to then-Sen. Barack Obama (D) once Romney lost, penning an endorsement in Slate Magazine.

His switch and backing of beleaguered Office of Legal Counsel nominee Dawn Johnsen, who supports abortion rights, did not go over well with some pro-life Roman Catholics. Last year, he was denied Communion.

But O’Connell indicated at the ceremony that Kmiec’s Catholic credentials are still intact.

“We still think of you as one of us,” O’Connell told Kmiec, Gilgoff reported.

U.S. News put Kmiec on its recent list of the top 10 most important faith leaders in the Obama administration.

Former New Jersey U.S Attorney Chris Christie is coming in for a rocky landing in advance of Tuesday’s Republican primary election for governor.

Rudy Giuliani campaigning with Chris Christie

Although Christie has a lead in the polls, conservative challenger Steve Lonegan continues to attack the ex-prosecutor’s ethics and mock his endorsement by former presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Christie campaigned on Friday with another failed GOP presidential candidate, ex-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who’s got his own ethical baggage.

The current fracas: whether a Christie campaign adviser and friend, corporate lawyer John P. Inglesino, received a token job with a New Jersey state senator intended to keep Inglesino on the state payroll, so he would remain eligible for government pension benefits, including life-time health care.

The Associated Press reported:

Lonegan released a radio ad Friday criticizing Christie for cronyism and asking Republican voters whether “Christie’s scandals will cost us the election.”

The AP also reported that Inglesino attended Seton Hall law school with Christie in the 1980s, and that Inglesino’s law firm, Stern & Kilcullen, was awarded a $3 million no-bid court-monitoring contract while Christie was New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney. Christie has previously been under fire for awarding another no-bid court monitoring contract worth up to $52 million to the firm run by his former boss, ex-Attorney General John Ashcroft. Click here and here for our previous coverage of the Christie-Ashcroft controversy. 

According to the New York Times:

Mr. Lonegan has pushed Mr. Christie farther to the right than he would have liked. Mr. Christie was once a supporter of abortion rights, but now has had to reaffirm — on television — that he opposes abortion, along with same-sex marriage. He ran for the General Assembly in the 1990s saying he favored the state’s ban on assault weapons, but he now tells gun-rights advocates that he wants only to enforce existing laws.

The winner of Tuesday’s Republican primary will face vulnerable incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine (D), whose handling of the economic crisis has caused his popularity to plummet.

UPDATE: Inglesino said he would drop out of the state-supported pension plan that had become controversial, but a pension official said he can’t legally do so unless he quits his job with the Republican state lawmaker.