About
Julie Elmer is a Chambers-ranked partner in the firm’s antitrust litigation practice with 30 years of litigation experience. Julie’s practice focuses on antitrust litigation and federal and state merger and civil conduct investigations.
Before joining Freshfields in 2020, Julie spent five years at the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where she was lead trial counsel in United States v. EnergySolutions and United States v. Sabre. In private practice, Julie’s recent experience includes successfully defending HPE in the DOJ’s suit to block its acquisition of Juniper Networks and subsequent efforts by a group of state attorneys general to challenge the DOJ’s settlement under the Tunney Act. Other experience includes successfully defending Google against the DOJ’s lawsuit seeking the divestiture of portions of its ad tech business and successfully defending an industrial client against the FTC’s price-fixing claims. Before DOJ, Julie was a partner at one of the premier defense firms in the Southeast. There, her practice focused on defending clients in complex commercial, mass tort, and class action litigation.
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Julie’s experience includes, at the US Department of Justice:
- Leading the DOJ’s victorious trial team in US v. Energy Solutions, the last litigated case in which a court addressed the failing firm defense.
- Leading the DOJ’s trial team in US v. Sabre/Farelogix, a case involving nascent competition and two-sided technology platforms.
- Leading merger and conduct investigations across a range of industries, including agriculture, aviation, canned seafood, energy, online travel, semiconductors, standard-setting organizations, telecommunications; and travel technology services.
- Playing critical roles on the DOJ’s trial teams in US v. AT&T/Time Warner and US v. United Continental.
- Playing a key role on the civil antitrust side of the DOJ’s parallel civil and criminal investigations of bid-rigging by South Korea-based fuel supply contractors to US military bases in South Korea, resulting in the largest civil antitrust damages settlement the US government had recovered at the time.
- Deposing key executives and building trial ready teams in Bayer/Monsanto and T-Mobile/Sprint.
In private practice, Julie’s experience includes:
- Defending Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) against the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) N.D. Cal. lawsuit to block HPE’s acquisition of Juniper Networks. On the eve of trial, DOJ announced that it had reached a settlement with HPE that cleared the way for the $14 billion transaction to close. After further litigation of Democratic State AGs’ Tunney Act challenge to the settlement, the court approved the settlement in 2026.
- Defending Google in litigation relating to its ad tech business, United States et al. v. Google, LLC (E.D. Va.), In re Google Advertising Antitrust Litigation (S.D.N.Y.), and The State of Texas, et al. v. Google LLC (E.D. Tex.), alleging violations of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act.
- Defending a manufacturing company in two FTC conduct investigations and in follow-on private antitrust litigation.
- Defending McWane, Inc. in an FTC enforcement action where, following an eight-week trial, the administrative law judge rejected the FTC’s price fixing claims and the full Commission subsequently dismissed six of seven conspiracy and monopolization claims.
- Defending corporate clients in litigation and arbitration in a broad range of industries including financial services, pharmaceuticals, construction, biotechnology, transportation, and insurance.
Julie Elmer
700 13th Street, NW
10th Floor
Washington, DC 20005-3960