First, use a regular while loop. Not do_while, because you need to define the $row array before the actual loop statments.
And to your question, its pretty simply, you can use a code like this:
$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM `tableName` ORDER BY `columnName`");
$i = 0;
echo "<table>";
echo "<tr>";
echo "<td><ul>";
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($query)){
$i++;
if($i >= (mysql_num_rows($query) - $i))
break;
echo "<li>" . $row['columnName'] . "</li>";
}
$query2 = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM `tableName` ORDER BY `columnName` LIMIT " . $i . ", " . mysql_num_rows($query) - $i);
echo "</ul></td><td><ul>";
while($row2 = mysql_fetch_assoc($query2)){
echo "<li>" . $row2['columnName'] . "</li>";
}
echo "</ul></td>";
echo "</tr>";
echo "</table>";
I didn't test that, but it might work.