Albright Leaves Hundreds of Cases for Busy Colleagues to Finish

Judge Alan Albright, after spending years making his Texas courtroom a national hub for patent litigation, is leaving behind one of the longest backlogs of cases of any federal judge for his colleagues to see through when he leaves the bench at the end of August.

The Western District of Texas had 129 civil cases pending for three years or longer, as of last September—and 70% belonged to Albright. He also accounted for 63% of the 706 civil motions that were ripe for a decision for six months or longer but hadn’t been resolved.

Albright had 446 undecided motions as of September 2025, nearly twice that of any other district judge in the three states that make up the Fifth Circuit. Albright’s judicial colleagues in Austin, Robert Pitman and David Ezra, had none.

“He has a huge docket that now the other judges are going to have,” said Lee Yeakel, who was a judge in the Western District of Texas until 2023, “because it’s not going to go down appreciably by the end of August, no matter how hard he works.”

The former patent litigator revealed April 21 he’ll step down after eight years and return to practicing law as an attorney. He said he held off on the announcement until the Senate confirmed judicial nominations in Austin and Waco, two divisions in the district where he hears cases, rather than create another opening.

His list of undecided cases highlights the struggles Albright was having on the bench—and a growing disinterest toward cases that are outside of his patent wheelhouse. Last December, he issued an order referring all criminal matters and many civil matters to a magistrate judge to make recommendations for Albright to review. He held onto only habeas corpus petitions, ex parte applications for temporary restraining orders, and patent cases.

“There will be a significant adjustment,” after Albright leaves,” Ezra, a senior judge who maintains a full docket, said in an interview.

Together, Ezra will tackle Albright’s caseload with Pitman and Andrew Davis, a former Lehotsky Keller Cohn partner who is on his way to Austin following his confirmation in the Senate on April 20. Other judges in the district have volunteered to chip in, Chief Judge Alia Moses said. It’s unclear how quickly the White House will move to replace him.

“We’re going to make every effort to minimize the disruptions and get matters resolved as quickly as possible,” Ezra said.

Docket Disorder

Albright, who took the bench in 2018 through an appointment from President Donald Trump, first exhibited signs of docket disorder in the second half of 2021, when his number of unresolved motions jumped from 19 to 295.

Albright declined to comment when asked to provide reasons for the backlog. On an official court report, he often cited his docket size or the complexity of a case as cause for the delays.

In the eight reporting periods that followed, he averaged 415 motions that had lingered for six months or longer.

At the end of 2024, Albright lobbied for an inter-district transfer from Waco to Austin, where he developed a successful patent law practice before turning to the bench. Following that move he recorded his all-time high, 466, in the first reporting period of March 2025.

Early on as judge his single-judge division in Waco became a magnet for patent cases, an area in which he’s seen as a top judicial expert.

But after transitioning to Austin last year, Albright also began getting more constitutional challenges to laws passed out of the state capitol.

During hearings, he often highlights his background in patent law and acknowledges weaknesses in other areas that he says he’s still trying to sharpen.

A Rare Move

Albright, 66, is ineligible for senior status because his combined age and years of service are short of what he’d need by about three years.

“In the history of the Western District of Texas it’s pretty uncommon for anyone to retire at all,” said Yeakel, who walked away from an Austin bench at 78 to join King & Spalding.

Other than himself, Yeakel said only Judge Clyde Shannon of the San Antonio division comes to mind as someone who fully stepped down without scaling back under senior status.

Explaining his departure, Albright told Bloomberg Law “for the past year or so I’ve really missed being in the courtroom as a trial lawyer.”

The move is especially surprising given his status in the world of patent litigation. Albright elevated the Western District to a second go-to patent venue in Texas after the Eastern District, known for being plaintiff friendly.

By 2021, nearly one in every four patent lawsuits were filed in Albright’s Waco court. But after an outcry from several senators and Chief Justice John Roberts, the Western District’s former chief judge issued an order requiring new patent suits filed in Waco to be randomly assigned throughout the district.

The random draw changed Albright’s workload, but he still received over 130 patent cases in the 12 months since April 2025, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis. That was fourth most in Texas behind Judges Rodney Gilstrap and Robert Schroeder of the Eastern District and Judge David Counts of the Western District.

Though it remains to be seen how hard Albright works between now and then to resolve old matters, it’s clear that much of his time will be spent on patent cases.

Albright said he’ll help Chris Wolfe, who recently got Senate confirmed to a Waco bench, with as many patent trials as he can before leaving.