If your drywall is finished, you could do surface mount with EMT. Draw up your garage, and lay out where you want the outlets to be. I ran all of my EMT up high, then dropped down from 4x4 boxes to each outlet so I'd have plenty of room to make connections at the box. Make sure to pay attention to any corners that need to be turned, so that you can buy the proper fittings. You'll also need the fittings to connect the tubing to each box.
I was faced with a similar setup and it has worked for me. I got all the tubing up where I wanted it, then got some 12 gauge stranded wire and got it pulled to where all the outlets were going to be. Once all the wire was pulled I called my father (in your case the electrician) to come over and do the connections, including installing the breakers and hooking to the panel.
On your compressor, look up the manufacturers specs to figure out the amp draw. Once you know that you can look up what size wire you need. Pull it through your EMT to where the compressor is going to be, and have your electrician finish it from there.
The more of the grunt work you do as far as pulling wire and hanging EMT, the cheaper your bill from the electrician should be. And as long as he's doing the connections, I can't see it being a problem.
In my case, the main panel is located just inside the garage. If this isn't the case for you, this plan wouldn't really work.
Any recommendations on how to proceed to powering a full workbench, bike table lift with a 240V Compressor? Beyond the obvious?