Samuel Alexander Garrison III, who as minority counsel for the House Judiciary Committee defended President Nixon in the 1974 impeachment hearings, died Sunday of leukemia at Friendship Healthcare Center in Roanoke, Va. He was 65.

Garrison, then 32, was the last-minute replacement chosen by the committee’s 17 Republicans to present the minority view of the case against Nixon. With just days to prepare, he submitted a 41-page argument against impeachment.

“By all accounts, Sam Garrison did not exactly hit a home run,” The Washington Post reported on July 23, 1974. “But his performance satisfied the senior Republicans who wanted someone, for appearance’s sake if nothing else, to argue the soft spots in the Judiciary Committee’s evidence.”

“The question,” Garrison said at the time, “is whether the public interest would better be served or not served by the removal of the president.”

In the 33 years since that summer, Garrison divorced, went bankrupt, came out as a gay man, served time in prison for embezzlement, and was disbarred. A former business partner conspired to kill him. He recovered his right to vote and his law license, and resumed his legal career.

Once described as a tough, highly partisan Nixon defender, Garrison joined the Democratic Party and became active in party politics, the gay rights movement, and a hate crimes task force in southwestern Virginia. He was appointed in 2003 to the Virginia Council on Human Rights by Governor Warner.

A short, stocky man whose dark good looks seemed to accentuate his youth, Garrison graduated from the University of Virginia and then from its law school in 1966. He immediately became an assistant commonwealth’s attorney in his home town of Roanoke. In 1969, at 27, he became the youngest person elected as commonwealth’s attorney.

In later years, he was a partner in a failed Roanoke restaurant and disco. The business had $1 million in debts when it closed, and Garrison declared bankruptcy. His partner, left with the debt, conspired to kill him to recover $300,000 in insurance, a court later found.

In 1980, as a court-appointed attorney representing a bankrupt mobile home firm in Georgia, Garrison was indicted in a $46,000 theft from its trust. He was convicted and disbarred and served four months of a one-year sentence. In 1984, Governor Robb, restored his political rights, and Garrison recovered his law license. Garrison then threw himself into Democratic political activism at the local and regional levels.