Fixing branches from a (really messed up) subversion repository

I've finally convinced my project to switch to Git... However, when my project first began, the people responsible for branching/tagging were fairly unfamiliar with standard procedures. As such, the beginnings of our repository look a little something like this:

.
`----project
     |
     `branch1
     |          |
     |          `----project
     |                        `src
     `branch2
     |          |
     |          `----project
     |                        `src
     `src

That is, the branches were essentially inside the trunk.  In order to
check out the "mainline" of development, you also got all of the
branches.  After a few branches, they realized that this was a
problem, and someone found out about the trunk/branches/tags paradigm.
 Our branches were svn mv'd to separate directories under "branches",
and all was well.  Now everything looked like a sane version control
repository.

Now, we want to import this into Git. I tried git svn import --stdlayout..., but this just stalled. I'm assuming because the first version didn't have a trunk/branches/tags structure. So, I had to import it leaving off the --stdlayout option. Is there any way to manually fix this in Git? After the import is complete, my master branch will have a trunk, branches, and tags directory in it. Can I create real branches out of the directories under the branches directory and then remove them from master?

Any help is greatly appreciated. I've been hoping for a while that we'd switch to Git, and I don't want this to hang us up.

Thanks,

Josh