The formal dismissal of charges was filed in federal court in Greensboro, N.C., on Wednesday. The decision came less than two weeks after Edwards’s trial on the campaign finance-related charges ended when a jury deadlocked on five felony counts and voted to acquit him on one charge.

The one-page filing concluded a prosecution that sparked significant criticism of the Justice Department by campaign finance lawyers who deemed the case legally flawed and by Democratic activists who considered it a form of political payback from a Republican prosecutor in North Carolina.

( PHOTOS: John Edwards’ life and career)

“We knew that this case — like all campaign finance cases — would be challenging. But it is our duty to bring hard cases when we believe that the facts and the law support charging a candidate for high office with a crime,” Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division Lanny Breuer said in a statement.

Breuer did not elaborate on prosecutors’ reasons for abandoning the case. He simply noted the jury’s division on most counts and said: “In the interest of justice, we have decided not to retry Mr. Edwards on those counts.”

Edwards’s defense team welcomed the decision to drop the case.

“While John has repeatedly admitted to his sins, he has also consistently asserted, as we demonstrated at the trial, that he did not violate any campaign law nor even imagined that any campaign laws could apply,” defense lawyers Abbe Lowell, Allison Van Laningham and Alan Duncan said in a joint statement. “We are confident that the outcome of any new trial would have been the same. We are very glad that, after living under this cloud for over three years, John and his family can have their lives back and enjoy the peace they deserve.”

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Edwards’s oldest daughter, Cate, expressed her gratitude via Twitter.

“Big sigh of relief,” she wrote. “Ready to move forward with life.”

A grand jury indicted the Democrat and two-time presidential candidate last year on charges that he illegally received campaign donations from his 2008 finance chairman Fred Baron and wealthy heiress Rachel “Bunny” Mellon. The funds, spent on private jet travel, luxury hotels and housing for Edwards’s mistress, Rielle Hunter, never passed through campaign accounts. However, prosecutors said they amounted to donations to Edwards’s campaign because they were intended to prevent damage to his presidential bid by hiding the extramarital affair from the media.

Justice Department officials insisted that the criminal case was not tainted by politics, even though the investigation of Edwards was led by George Holding, the chief federal prosecutor in Raleigh and an appointee of President George W. Bush. Holding stayed on for more than two years into the Obama administration to complete probes of Edwards and another Democratic officeholder.

Days after Edwards’s indictment was announced last June, Holding resigned and announced he was running for Congress as a Republican. While Edwards’s trial was underway last month, Holding won the Republican nomination. He’s expected to easily win election in the GOP-leaning district this fall.

In an interview with POLITICO Wednesday evening, Holding defended his office’s pursuit of the case.

“It’s a very unique set of facts, but he was running for the highest office in the land and there’s a lot of scrutiny on that,” Holding said. The former U.S. attorney said prosecutors moved forward in part because they thought “if someone can get away with this, what do campaign finance laws mean? … The government made the determination this is a crime.”

“Political corruption cases are the most difficult cases … and this was a very difficult case,” Holding said.

He rejected claims that the prosecution was politically motivated.

In cases against elected officials, “there are always going to be charges that this is a political case. That just comes with the territory,” Holding said. “The judge ruled there was no evidence of that.”

Many campaign finance law experts criticized the case against Edwards, arguing that the law governing when payments for personal expenses can be considered campaign donations is simply too murky to sustain a criminal prosecution.

Under federal campaign finance law, prosecutors can only win a conviction if they prove a defendant knew his actions were illegal. Edwards’s defense team insisted Wednesday, as they did at the trial, that he had no inkling that the payments for Hunter’s living expenses could be illegal.

After hearing nearly four weeks of testimony and arguments during the trial, the jury deliberated for nine days before declaring on May 31 that they were hopelessly deadlocked on most counts. In interviews with several news outlets, some jurors said the prosecution lacked evidence that Edwards deliberately broke the law.

The jury reportedly leaned against convicting Edwards on each count. Jurors split 8-4 in favor of the former senator on the campaign finance charges and 11-1 in favor of acquitting him on a charge that he caused the filing of false campaign reports with the Federal Election Commission, NBC News reported after interviewing members of the jury.

“We are grateful that the Justice Department, after hearing from the jury, has dismissed the remaining charges in this case,” Edwards’s lawyers said. “The novel theory of campaign law violations charged by the Justice Department is not a crime. It should be addressed, if at all, by the Federal Election Commission, which our evidence showed seems to have agreed with our views on the law.”

Wednesday’s announcement was not a surprise because officials signaled immediately after the mistrial that the Justice Department was highly unlikely to retry the case.

Edwards entered his trial as a widely despised figure because of the affair he continued while his wife suffered an ultimately fatal recurrence of cancer. In a nationally televised interview in August 2008, he repeatedly lied about aspects of the affair and he falsely denied that he was the father of Hunter’s daughter, Quinn.

Edwards never took the stand in his defense, but after the mistrial was declared he spoke publicly in front of the courthouse steps.

He had done nothing illegal, the former senator said, but “an awful, awful lot that was wrong.” He also said he was taking full responsibility for the sordid mess.

“And there is no one else responsible for my sins,” he said. “None of the people who came to court and testified are responsible. Nobody working for the government is responsible. I am responsible. And if I want to find the person who should be held accountable for my sins, honestly, I don’t have to go any further than the mirror.”

Edwards went out of his way to express his devotion to Quinn, whom he said he loves “more than any of you can ever imagine and who I am so close to and so, so grateful for.”

Officials at the department noted that the major decisions in the case were approved by career officials in the Public Integrity Section and that the prosecution was ultimately cleared by Breuer, an Obama appointee. However, Democratic lawyers said Breuer was in an awkward spot: If he shut down the prosecution, he would have been accused of going easy on a prominent Democrat.

Holding demurred on Wednesday when asked if he agreed with the decision to drop the case.

“I’m not disappointed. This is the way our system works and I respect the jury’s verdict. I respect Mr. Breuer’s decision,” Holding said. “I’m not in a position to question his opinion.”

While Wednesday’s decision ends any criminal liability for Edwards on the affair-related payments, he could still face challenges to his law license in North Carolina because of the numerous false public statements he made about the matter.

After the trial concluded, Edwards signaled his desire to return to work on his signature issue of poverty — a plan his defense team also stressed to the jury repeatedly inside the courtroom.

“I don’t think God is through with me,” Edwards said. “I really believe he thinks there’s still some good things I can do. And whatever happens with this legal stuff going forward, what I’m hopeful about is all those kids that I’ve seen in the poorest parts of this country and in some of the poorest places in the world, that I can help them in whatever way I’m still capable of helping them.”