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The indictment detailed a wide-ranging scheme of kickbacks and pay-for-play of a kind not entirely unfamiliar in Louisiana history. Contractors and vendors looking for work with the city would provide the mayor with vacations, big checks and even free granite for his family business. In exchange, they would be awarded lucrative contracts with the city, assistance in defusing community opposition to their projects and even forgiveness of tax penalties.

While federal prosecutors have convicted a Louisiana governor, a congressman, a city councilman and members of the school board in the past 15 years alone, this is the first time in New Orleans history that a mayor has been indicted on corruption charges.

Mr. Nagin's lawyer, Robert Jenkins, did not return a call seeking comment. However, he called a local radio talk show in the afternoon, and in response to a question from the host, John (Spud) McConnell, suggested that the indictment had come as a surprise amid continuing plea negotiations.

"Well, we were surprised that the indictment came today because we were still talking with the government and in fact we had talked about meeting next week as well," he said.

But it came as no surprise here in the city, where people had been expecting an indictment for months. Aside from someone identified only as "Businessman A," the other figures alleged to have taken part in the conspiracy have either been convicted or pleaded guilty to bribery and corruption charges in the past three years.

Even the timing was not a shock, as one of the contractors pleaded guilty in December to paying a $60,000 bribe to "Public Official A" on Jan. 30, 2008, which set off a five-year statute of limitations that would have come to a close this month.

While Mr. Nagin, 56, had not been officially named as a target of a federal grand jury, the pretense that Public Official A, who showed up in another plea, could be anyone but the mayor had long since been abandoned on local news reports and in conversations around town.

A lawyer for one of the contractors suggested to reporters last month that a person would have to be "the worst investigative reporter on the planet" to not know who Public Official A was.

"This has long been a topic of conversation among the political class," said Edward E. Chervenak, a professor of political science at the University of New Orleans. "When are the feds going to indict Nagin? Everybody's been waiting for the shoe to fall."

Mr. Nagin came into office in 2002 as an outsider, a reformer out to clean City Hall, a business executive who disdained the old machine politics and was spouting new ideas. It did not take long for him to develop a reputation as a man whose thoughts far outpaced his actions, with ambitious proposals often going nowhere.

"It was really a signature problem in his early administration," said Stephanie Grace, a former columnist for The Times-Picayune who covered his entire career as mayor. "It wasn't corruption. It was just things just not happening."

While the inability to act was an unfortunate if tolerable trait in a mayor during normal times, it took on tragic dimensions after Hurricane Katrina, when the very existence of the city was in doubt. New Orleanians scattered around the country looked to the mayor for direction on how the city would rebuild and, while Mr. Nagin frequently offered colorful commentary on the frustrations of recovery, he gave little guidance even on crucial issues.

"He basically made this decision not to decide," Ms. Grace said.

Still, though billions of dollars in federal money were coming into New Orleans after Katrina, few initially thought of the mayor as corrupt.

Not until a series of investigative reports in The Times-Picayune and, in 2010, the guilty plea of Mr. Nagin's chief technology officer, did that conception start changing. According to the indictment, F.B.I. agents had interviewed Mr. Nagin about kickbacks as far back as 2009.

The indictment alleges that the mayor began a kickback scheme in June 2004, with an executive order allowing Greg Meffert, the technology officer, to engage a city vendor in a no-bid contract.