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A civil grand jury will not take on a complaint against Rep. Gary Condit, shown here at a session of Congress.

MODESTO, California (CNN) -- A California civil grand jury rejected a complaint filed against Rep. Gary Condit by a flight attendant who alleges that the congressman obstructed justice and tried to get her to sign a false affidavit, an attorney for the woman said Monday night.

"The foreman of the grand jury sent a letter to us [Monday] and informed us that the topic which we were complaining of was not proper jurisdiction in state court in California," said Jim Robinson, an attorney for Anne Marie Smith.

Robinson, using a peculiar feature of California law, asked a civil grand jury in Stanislaus County to consider the complaint. Condit has a home in Stanislaus County and represents it in Congress.

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Smith claims to have had a yearlong affair with Condit, whom she says she met on a flight from San Francisco to Washington in her job as flight attendant for United Airlines. She said the congressman tried to get her to sign a sworn statement in June that said they never had a relationship -- at the same time authorities were questioning Condit about Chandra Levy, a former federal Bureau of Prisons intern who was last seen on April 30.

The grand jury could have asked District Attorney Jim Brazelton to launch a criminal investigation, although the recommendation would have been nonbinding.

Brazelton earlier rejected a request by Robinson to launch a probe by a criminal grand jury.

"There's no violation of the law, criminally," Brazelton told CNN Monday, saying he would not proceed with a criminal probe even if the civil grand jury recommended one. He said that based on the evidence presented, no California law was violated.

Robinson suggested Brazelton had improper influence over the grand jury.

"These are supposed to be civilians. There're not supposed to be attorneys involved here," Robinson said. "This is an attorney's issue that was raised. We believe it was raised by the district attorney, Mr. Brazelton, who is the gentleman we're trying to avoid in the first place."

Denied allegations

Smith made her allegations after Condit became a key figure in the investigation into the disappearance of Levy, with whom Condit has been linked romantically. He has, however, denied publicly that it was a romantic relationship.

Police sources said Condit, 53, admitted in the third of four interviews with law enforcement officials that he had an affair with Levy, 24.

He has said that he had nothing to do with her disappearance, and police have said he is not a suspect in what is still a missing person case.

Smith's attorneys filed requests for the indictments of Condit, his chief of staff, Mike Lynch, and his investigator, Don Thornton, with Brazelton on August 27. They filed them both for civil and criminal grand jury consideration.

Smith: Condit 'asked me to lie'

The civil grand jury met last Thursday to consider the complaint. Marnie Ardis, the administrator for the civil grand jury, said the panel had three options in the case -- reject the complaint outright, launch its own investigation of the matter or ask Brazelton to investigate the case. Robinson said the case has perfect jurisdiction for the state court of California and he can easily prove it.

"We plan to refile in Stanislaus County and file this time with a lengthy legal brief educating the jurors themselves, written in English, so they can understand what the issue of subject matter jurisdiction is all about," Robinson said. "We don't expect them to understand it they've only listened to one attorney and he's the attorney we believed was already corrupted, this proves it."

Judicial Watch, a public interest legal group often associated with conservative causes, joined Smith in her complaint. Officials from the group had said that if the grand jury refused to act, they could appeal to Stanislaus Superior Court or refile the complaint in another jurisdiction where some of the alleged acts of obstruction of justice took place, most likely San Francisco.

In an interview with ABC last month, Condit denied that he had a relationship with Smith, denied he asked her to sign a false affidavit and suggested that she was telling her story for financial gain.

-- CNN's Bob Franken contributed to this report.