Honoring Excellence in Antitrust Law: Kenneth Ryan O’Rourke Named 2026 Antitrust Lawyer of the Year

Kenneth Ryan O’Rourke has been selected as the California Lawyers Association Antitrust & Consumer Protection Section’s 2026 Antitrust Lawyer of the Year. 

Ken is an accomplished antitrust litigator, an established antitrust leader and innovator, and a longtime contributor to the Section.  He is also a positive mentor and role model for generations of antitrust lawyers.  His legacy is improving litigation excellence and collegiality among antitrust lawyers in the United States and internationally, in addition to his litigation success.

Ken is currently based in Wilson Sonsini’s Washington D.C. office with a continuing presence in California where he was based for over thirty years.

Practice Focus.  Predominately a defense lawyer over his forty-year career, Ken has litigated virtually every type of antitrust case including Section 1 price-fixing, Section 2 monopolization and attempted monopolization, Section 2 antitrust/IP (Walker Process, pharma-related cases and high-tech standard setting abuse cases), Section 7 merger cases, FTC Section 5 investigations, as well as Cartwright Act cases, and state unfair competition law cases, among others.

Ken has also litigated numerous cases for antitrust plaintiffs.  This includes Ken’s recent role as co-lead counsel of a certified antitrust plaintiffs’ class of approximately 32,000 PC game publishers alleging monopolistic practices involving the Steam PC gaming platform operated by Valve.  In certifying the class, Judge Jamal N. Whitehead of the Western District of Washington in Seattle appointed four law firms to co-lead the case and litigate for the class of PC game publishers.  Ken leads Wilson Sonsini’s team as one of the four co-lead counsel firms acting for the class.

Few other litigators have served as lead counsel for a certified plaintiffs’ antitrust class and as lead counsel for defendants sued in antitrust class actions. 

California Litigator.  In California, Ken currently co-leads Seagate’s Section 1 case in the Northern District of California against foreign and domestic companies for allegedly price fixing high-tech parts used in making hard disc drives for computers, servers and other applications.  Seagate is among the world’s largest hard drive manufacturers and purchasers of the allegedly price-fixed parts.  The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Seagate’s favor earlier this year on the scope of the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act (FTAIA) and its application to Seagate’s Sherman Act claims.

Ken led a memory chip company’s defense to price fixing claims in the In re DRAM, SRAM, and Flash Memory Antitrust MDLs in the Northern District of California.  In the DRAM case, he twice led the briefing and twice argued for the defense group in obtaining two then precedent setting decisions dismissing the indirect purchaser plaintiffs’ Cartright Act and other state law claims arising from their purchases of computers containing DRAM.  As the district court noted at the time:

“[T]he court acknowledges the potentially devastating effect of this ruling on plaintiffs’ case in chief, as well as the fact that the ruling itself is not without controversy or uncertainty, given the state of the law on the issues raised herein with respect to antitrust injury.  Indeed, the court does not expect to be the last word on this issue.  Nonetheless, after due consideration of the parties’ arguments, the court is convinced that the present ruling is most faithful to existing precedent.”  (536 F.Supp.2d 1129, 1142 (N.D. Cal. 2008)).

Ken was also part of the litigation team for a defendant in Rambus v. Micron, et al., a case tried for five weeks to a jury in San Francisco Superior Court ultimately resulting in a jury verdict for the defense.  The win was hailed as a defense victory of the year. 

He was counsel for the memory chip company in bringing antitrust claims against Rambus more than 25 years ago in the Northern District of California for allegedly abusing the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC) standard setting process, one of the first such cases raising and pursuing this then novel antitrust legal theory.

He also was part of a trial team that twice tried a plaintiff-side Walker Process case in the Central District of California seeking antitrust damages from a tech company for enforcing an objectively baseless patent.  Separately, in the IP space, after prevailing on summary judgment of infringement, he was lead trial counsel in the Central District of California for an inventor suing a medical device maker for willfully infringing the inventor’s patented technology for automating aspects of an artificial respirator.  Juries in each of these cases rendered verdicts in favor of Ken’s clients.

Ken has litigated major antitrust merger cases.  He defended Alaska Air in litigation brought by travel agents and air travelers in the Northern District of California challenging Alaska Air’s acquisition of Virgin America on antitrust grounds.  The case resolved and the merger closed successfully. 

National Presence.  Outside of California, Ken defended US Airways in litigation filed by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) in Washington D.C. seeking to block US Airways’ acquisition of American Airlines on antitrust grounds, the successful conclusion to which shortly before trial formed one of the world’s leading airlines.

He was also part of the litigation team defending AT&T and TimeWarner against DOJ’s antitrust challenge to AT&T’s acquisition of TimeWarner.  The companies’ Washington D.C. trial victory was upheld on appeal.  At the time, the press labeled the trial as the antitrust trial of the century.

He represented pharmaceutical companies in antitrust cases in different parts of the country.  He led the defense of a global energy company sued for alleged anti-competitive conduct in federal court in Hawai’i, obtaining a dismissal of the complaint.  And, as noted, he currently leads his firm’s role as co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs’ class of PC game publishers in the State of Washington.

Away from the courtroom, he served as interim Chief Legal Officer of Health Care Service Corp. (HCSC) in Chicago.  HCSC is one of the nation’s largest health insurers as operator of the BlueCross BlueShield health plans in Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.  In this role, Ken’s perspective was the client facing the sharp end of significant antitrust litigation.

International Qualifications.  Ken’s cases in the United States often involve related litigation and investigations overseas, including in Belgium, China, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere.  In one international matter, he led negotiations to free a client’s top business executive, a U.S. citizen, being held in mainland China over a significant business dispute with a Chinese government-controlled electronics manufacturer.  As a result of his international legal experience, Ken qualified to practice law as a solicitor in England, Wales, and the Republic of Ireland.

He is one of three United States lawyers invited annually to discuss antitrust law and litigation developments with four dozen of the United Kingdom’s and Europe’s leading competition lawyers, barristers and economists at the European Forum on Competition Litigation.

California Antitrust & Consumer Protection Section.  Ken served as Chair of the Section in 2012-13, Vice Chair of the Section, and twice as co-chair of the Golden State Institute (GSI), the Section’s preeminent antitrust law conference.  He created and chaired GSI’s first two “Big-Stakes Trial” panels over a dozen years ago, a panel which remains one of the most popular panels at GSI today.

For the last three years, he created and chaired at GSI a creative approach to teaching legal ethics in which lawyers role-play ethical dilemmas and solutions while educating (and entertaining) the audience.  As one example, during his “Antitrust Ethics in Action” panel last year, a federal magistrate judge presided over a mock hearing exercise raising and resolving ethical dilemmas involving the litigants’ use and misuse of AI in researching and drafting pleadings and briefs. 

Ken also served the last three years on the Section’s advisory committee recommending to the Section’s Executive Committee the next generation of rising antitrust lawyers who should be honored with the Section’s Lawyers to Watch Award.

Leadership and Recognitions.  Ken has been recognized by litigation peers and industry organizations in the U.S. and abroad including, for example, Chambers Global, Chambers USA, Global Competition Review, Global Competition’s Thought Leaders, Lawdragon’s 500 Leading Litigators in America, Lawdragon’s 500 Leading Global Antitrust & Competition Lawyers, Best Lawyers in America, Irish Legal 100, and other U.S. and international bar and professional associations.

Ken is a leader of the American Bar Association (ABA) Antitrust Section.  He currently chairs (and is developing) the Section’s inaugural Salon on Litigating High Stakes Antitrust Litigation, co-chairs the Global Private Litigation Committee, formerly co-chaired the Intellectual Property Committee, and served on the International Cartel Task Force, among other leadership positions.

For the International Bar Association (IBA) Competition Law Section, Ken currently serves on the Cartels Working Group and the Publications Committee.

Ken has authored countless articles on domestic and international litigation, investigations and other antitrust topics.  And he has been invited to speak on antitrust litigation and investigations at numerous professional conferences and events in more than a dozen jurisdictions:  Canada, China, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, and the United States.

He has guest-taught antitrust classes at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, George Washington University in Washington D.C., and George Mason Law School in Northern Virginia.

Outside of antitrust, he prosecuted and tried criminal cases in Los Angeles County as a deputy public prosecutor, including prosecuting and resolving one manslaughter case via a plea agreement and trying another manslaughter case to verdict.

His pro bono work includes serving as lead counsel for a First AME Church in Southern California in litigation against a financial institution to restore the Church’s title to its buildings and property after wayward church executives mortgaged the property.  The financial institution stood its ground on the basis of the signed mortgage documents.  End result:  Ken and his team got the church its property back.

Legacy.  Ken founded the Antitrust Litigation Forum.  The Forum is an annual gathering of leading plaintiffs and defense antitrust litigators, and in-house lawyers who oversee antitrust litigation, where the group of 50 discusses and debates cutting-edge topics, practice experiences, and litigation and antitrust developments while fostering civility and collegiality among plaintiff and defense counsel across the country’s antitrust litigation bar.  There is no head table or PowerPoint slides, just a topic agenda sparking intense conversations and discussions among peers.

Ken chaired the Forum for ten years from inception to 2019.  He now serves as Chair Emeritus.  Today there are about ten similar antitrust fora around the world bringing together leading antitrust lawyers in various countries and regions, all focusing on intellectual discourse, excellence and improving collegiality among antitrust lawyers.  These fora sprung up from the Antitrust Litigation Forum in the United States Ken founded 15 years ago. 

This past year, Ken participated in the Asia Antitrust Forum in Thailand with competition lawyers from a dozen Asia/APAC countries, the European Forum on Competition Litigation in England with leading solicitors, barristers, lawyers and economists from the UK and the continent, and the Antitrust Litigation Forum in New Orleans with U.S. litigators and in-house lawyers from across the country.

Throughout his career, Ken has mentored succeeding generations of antitrust lawyers, teaching them litigation skills and career-path enhancement.  In support of his nomination for Antitrust Lawyer of the Year, several former associates he worked with wrote letters extolling his mentoring and the positive impact he has had on their legal careers.

Background

• Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (October 2019 to present).  Ken is based in Washington D.C. with a continuing presence in California via Wilson Sonsini’s San Francisco office.  He continues to litigate cases in the Northern District of California and elsewhere on the west coast.

• O’Melveny & Myers LLP (October 1985 to October 2019).  Based in Los Angeles (1985-2017) and then Washington D.C. (2018-19).

• Health Care Service Corp. (HCSC) (2015-16).  Better known as BlueCross BlueShield of Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, thesecond largest BlueCross company behind Anthem and one of the nation’s largest health insurers.  Ken served as interim Chief Legal Officer overseeing a legal department of over 100 professionals in five states.  
  
  Based in Chicago for nearly 1-1/2 years while simultaneously serving as an O’Melveny & Myers litigation partner, he advised the Board and executive management on a variety of legal issues and litigation facing the company, including the BlueCross BlueShield Antitrust Litigation MDL in the Northern District of Alabama.
  
• Loyola Law School (JD 1985).  Editor-in-Chief, International & Comparative Law Journal.  Externships:  U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission, Enforcement Division; Los Angeles County Superior Court.  UCLA (BA Economics 1982).  MVP Frosh Crew 1978.

• Admissions/Professional Credentials.  California Bar 1985; England & Wales 2014; Illinois (in-house counsel admission) 2016; District of Columbia 2018; and Ireland 2019.  U.S. Coast Guard captain’s license to operate commercial passenger carrying vessels 1979.