CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – A judge has dismissed as “absurd” a precription drug charge filed against a prison social worker a few days after the worker sued prison officials.

But Concord District Court Judge Gerard Boyle said he did not believe the state acted in bad faith, so he declined to make the state pay Harold McAllister’s legal bills.

McAllister, 40, of Concord, was charged in October with illegally possessing prescription drugs because he had some of his wife’s antidepressants in an Advil bottle. McAllister said he found the loose pills, which have no street value, in his car after a camping trip and put them in the Advil bottle.

State police charged McAllister after discovering the pills during an investigation of drug smuggling into the state prison in Concord.

In a ruling made available Thursday, Boyle said the statute is intended to prevent anyone except a pharmacist from dispensing prescription medications, not to bar family members from having one another’s medications.

“Reading the statute as the state suggests in the complaint would lead to a patently absurd, and indeed dangerous result,” Boyle wrote.

“The state’s interpretation of the statute would lead to the absurd result that nearly every residence in New Hampshire would become a House of Crime, and most adults would soon be criminals.”

Spokesman Jeff Lyons said the Department of Corrections was considering how to respond to the ruling. McAllister has been suspended, with pay, since Oct. 11.

Police and prison officials discovered the pills in McAllister’s backpack in September when they strip-searched him at work and searched his car.

The state employees union publicly protested the strip search and McAllister sued the prison, claiming the strip search was illegal because a judge hadn’t approved it. The suit is pending, but less than a week after it was filed, McAllister was charged with illegally possessing the prescription pills.

McAllister’s lawyers called the timing suspicious. Lawyer Chuck Douglas said Thursday the ruling should help McAllister in his civil lawsuit.

McAllister was questioned in the drug investigation because an inmate who was suspected had been trying to contact him. It is not clear from court records whether prison officials knew McAllister was counseling the inmate and was scheduled to meet with him the day McAllister was searched.