Gohier was Minister of Justice from March 1793 to April 1794, overseeing the arrest of Girondists, and a member of the Council of Five Hundred.

He succeeded Jean Baptiste Treilhard in the French Directory (June 1799), where he represented the republican view in the face of growing royalist opposition.

When Bonaparte suddenly returned from the Egyptian campaign in October 1799, he repeatedly tried to win the support of Gohier, who was then president of the Directory, for his political projects.

In 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte made Gohier consul-general at Amsterdam (in the Batavian Republic), and on the union of the Kingdom of Holland with the French Empire, he was offered a similar post in the United States.

His wife, who had been a close friend to Joséphine de Beauharnais, had died in 1825, and, upon his death, Gohier left his wealth and surname to Mélanie d'Hervilly Hahnemann.