The ‘Rocket Docket’ Judge Who Will Decide the Fate of Google’s Ad Technology

The ruling by a federal judge, Leonie Brinkema, in an antitrust case over Google’s advertising technology could add to the internet company’s woes.

During a trial in a Virginia courtroom in September over Google’s dominance in advertising technology, concepts and phrases like a “second-price auction," “demand-side platforms” and “header bidding” repeatedly came up.

Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, who was presiding in the antitrust case, often grasped within minutes the obscure mechanics of placing ads online. She also pushed lawyers to move on when they slowed down the proceedings with objections, or when witnesses repeated things she had already heard.

“Let’s go,” Judge Brinkema said again and again.

The trial lasted just three weeks. In contrast, a landmark antitrust trial last year over Google’s search dominance took 10 weeks. Another antitrust trial over Google’s app store policies, a case brought by Epic Games, ran for a month. The Microsoft antitrust trial in the late 1990s lasted more than eight months.

Now Judge Brinkema, 80, is moving the Google ad tech case to its next phase in the federal court where she works, which is known as a “rocket docket.” On Monday, she heard closing statements from the Justice Department and a group of states, which brought the ad technology case, and from Google’s lawyers. Earlier this year, she told lawyers that she would use closing arguments to answer her remaining questions before she issued her decision, which is expected in the coming months.

Her ruthless efficiency has made the case one of the speediest monopoly trials in recent decades. That could swiftly add to Google’s challenges, since Judge Brinkema could order the Silicon Valley giant to sell many of its ad tech assets if she finds that the company subverted competition. The ad-tech division generated $31 billion last year for Alphabet, Google’s parent company, or 10 percent of its sales.

Google is separately grappling with the potential fallout from the search antitrust case, where a judge ruled in August that the company had broken the law to maintain its search dominance. On Wednesday, the Justice Department and a group of states that brought that case asked the judge to force Google to sell Chrome, the popular web browser, and share search results with rivals to level the playing field in online search.

Bill Baer, a former top antitrust official at the Justice Department, said Judge Brinkema could compel Google to make “meaningful structural” changes in ad technology as well.

The trial “was quite quick, but she didn’t cut any corners in terms of making sure there was adequate discovery of facts and adequate discovery from expert witnesses,” said Mr. Baer, who led a 2016 trip to China that included Judge Brinkema.

Judge Brinkema declined to comment through her chambers. Spokesmen for the Justice Department and Google also declined to comment.

Judge Brinkema was born in Teaneck, N.J., and her voice still carries a recognizable hint of a tristate accent. She graduated from Rutgers University and got her law degree from Cornell. President Bill Clinton nominated her to her current role as U.S. district judge in Alexandria, Va., in 1993.

At the Google trial in September, she said she disliked using the word “housekeeping” to refer to procedural matters that pop up during a trial.

“I hate that term, especially because of the women attorneys and a woman female judge” involved in the case, she said. “We’ve got to stop that.”

The courthouse where Judge Brinkema works — in a section of Alexandria dominated by stocky office buildings — can feel far from the hubbub of nearby Washington. Electronic devices are not allowed, leaving email-obsessed lawyers and reporters cut off from communications. Instead of a bustling cafeteria, the courthouse has a small self-serve market stocked with energy bars and instant noodles.

Judge Brinkema has hosted her share of high-profile trials there. In 2006, she sentenced Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person to be convicted in a U.S. court for a role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to multiple lifetime prison terms. She also presided over the 2015 trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a C.I.A. officer who was found guilty on claims that he shared secrets with a New York Times reporter.

The Justice Department filed its ad-tech lawsuit against Google in January 2023. The case concerns the tech system that places ads on web pages, like a news site or beauty blog. The government accused Google of having monopolies over core parts of that system, which gave the company leverage to take a bigger portion of each ad transaction than in a competitive market.

Google countered that the ad-tech market was already fiercely competitive, with social media and streaming companies having become big players in the space. The company’s lawyers also said multiple Supreme Court precedents invalidated the Justice Department’s case.

Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a law professor at Vanderbilt University who researches antitrust, said Judge Brinkema would most likely chart her own path in the case, uninfluenced by the earlier ruling that Google is a monopoly.

“I think judges like to be independent minded,” she said.

At trial, Judge Brinkema, who was assigned the case right after it was filed, quickly lived up to her court’s reputation for speed.

During one contentious cross-examination early on, a Justice Department lawyer began objecting before Judge Brinkema shut him down.

“I don’t want a million objections, Counsel, please,” she said.

She often sped up proceedings by sharing her intolerance for extraneous details. At one point, she told the Justice Department’s lead lawyer that she didn’t need to keep hearing snippets of an audio recording being used to elicit a witness’s testimony.

“I don’t need to hear it five times,” she said.

On numerous occasions, she warned Google’s lawyers that they were taking detours or repeating themselves, including times when she cut off testimony from Google employees discussing the work they did for advertising clients.

“It’s too cumulative,” Judge Brinkema said often to Google’s lawyers. “It’s not going to add to your case.”

Google’s lawyers tried highlighting the company’s good deeds while presenting their case, but Judge Brinkema had limited appetite for overly rosy testimony. When a witness discussed the ways Google had helped the federal government, she said she had had it.

“This is sounding more like P.R. than getting to the issues in this case,” she said sharply as the courtroom erupted in laughter — a regular occurrence when she took issue with something.

Tails between their legs, Google’s lawyers quickly moved on.

Jack Begg contributed research.