Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette M. Bruce McCullough, in his office at the U.S. Steel Tower, worked as a mediator in the Pittsburgh Penguins bankruptcy case. "The Penguins mediation was the most fun," Judge McCullough said. Click photo for larger image.

It didn't take M. Bruce McCullough long to respond to the letter from the New York lawyer demanding that Mr. McCullough's client, bankrupt Allegheny International, pay his client early. The attorney even was insisting that AI pay a penalty.

That frosted Mr. McCullough, then a partner at the Downtown law firm Buchanan Ingersoll and not one to mince words. Like a gunslinger moving for his holster, he reached for an ink stamp imprinted with a single, eight-letter word for a bull's by-product.

"I just put [it] on the bottom of the letter and sent it back," recalls Mr. McCullough, now chief judge for U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Downtown.

The austere black robe Judge McCullough, 62, has worn since being elevated to the bench a dozen years ago hasn't modulated his sharp tongue, a weapon all the more effective because of his formidable intellect, experience, instincts and a righteousness born of being a minister's son. Whether he's exhorting a 212'er -- what he calls New York attorneys -- to "give me a break" by halting a spurious argument or reprimanding a flummoxed lawyer representing a bankrupt individual, there's never much doubt about what's on Judge McCullough's mind.

As a lawyer for one of the befuddled creditors of Le-Nature's, the bankrupt Latrobe bottler victimized by massive fraud, found out at a Nov. 13 hearing.

"Maybe the order ought to reflect that you don't have a flying, silly ass guess about what the value is," the judge suggested after the lawyer danced around the problem of valuing the company's assets given its mangled books.

Compared with the genteel demeanor and decorum characteristic of most court rooms, Judge McCullough "is more of a blunt instrument," says Douglas A. Campbell, a prominent Pittsburgh bankruptcy attorney who met him 25 years ago, when the judge, his hair constrained by a head band, drove around in a two-seat Mercedes with the top down. Mr. Campbell says the judge often starts hearings by characterizing the dispute in very practical terms.

"He's a little preemptive in his style. He cuts right through to the essence," Mr. Campbell says.

Says David K. Rudov, an attorney representing Le-Nature's unsecured creditors: "You generally know where you stand with Judge McCullough. If you are blowing smoke, you know where you stand immediately."

The judge's one-word reply to the New York attorney, stamped in the early 1990s, foreshadowed his decisive, no-nonsense approach on the bench. His methods prompt complaints from some attorneys -- who understandably wish to remain anonymous -- that because the judge sizes things up so quickly, he doesn't consider what they have to say.

Others dispute that, saying he can be swayed by lawyers who do their homework and make logical, informed arguments. Lawyers intimidated by the judge's blunt manner and unbending intellect may not see it that way, but those who know Judge McCullough insist you'll find a much different person if you're not afraid of scratching beneath the surface.

"He has a big heart," Mr. Campbell says. "He is a big softy in the end."

Big softies generally don't serve as lead attorney in two major corporate bankruptcies simultaneously, which is how Judge McCullough rose to prominence. At Buchanan Ingersoll in the late 1980s, he represented AI and Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel in protracted, contentious bankruptcies where high-priced attorneys argued the claims of hundreds of creditors while vulture investors fought for control of his clients.

Specializing in bankruptcy wasn't a career goal. After graduating from the University of Michigan law school in 1969, Judge McCullough considered practicing labor law with a small Minneapolis firm. His other option was BI, then a small Pittsburgh firm with fewer than three dozen attorneys.

His social consciousness helped him decide. Major cities were marred by riots the previous year following Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. Minneapolis wasn't troubled by the racial tensions, but Pittsburgh was, which made it more appealing.

"I was a little bit idealistic and that kind of stuff," he recalls in even, carefully chosen words that are a stark contrast to his court room demeanor.

Unlike the judge's mind, his desk is cluttered.

Evidence that he's abiding by a pledge he made when he was sworn in -- "I'd like to make a difference without taking myself too seriously" -- can be found on a bookshelf over his right shoulder. It's populated by 17 miniature cut-out figures of him in business and golf attire. Leaning on the bookcase are two golf clubs. One is a shiny, persimmon-headed Power Built wood, as much of a maverick on a golf course these days as Judge McCullough is in a courtroom.

"I play golf, but not that many people would recognize it," he says.

M. Bruce McCullough -- the "M" is for Malcolm, his father's name -- was born in Princeton, N.J., in July 1944, the oldest of three sons of Yale-educated parents.

Because his father was a Presbyterian preacher, the family moved often, living in Connecticut, Minnesota, Michigan and Missouri and China, where his parents were missionaries before, according to the judge, "we got kicked out by Mao Tse-tung."

When he was a sophomore in high school, the family settled in Havre, Mont., population 15,000.

"We were not very rich, but I didn't know it. We got to hunt and fish, and we met some awfully nice people, and that was my life," he says.

Being the son of a preacher commissioned to a small town in desolate north central Montana left a lasting impression on him, sharpening his sense of right and wrong and the value of money. He remembers being concerned about money because of his father's profession and how others in Havre -- the state's fifth-largest city at the time, he says -- lived with the same worries.

"Living in Montana and watching how people made the best of almost nothing was impressive," he says.

Mr. McCullough's clients at BI had plenty of money. They included Union National Bank, now part of National City. When the bank's loans went sour, he had to clean them up. Eventually, chasing bankrupt borrowers for banks turned into representing borrowers burdened with unmanageable debt, the problem faced by Wheeling-Pitt, which declared bankruptcy in 1985. AI filed three years later.

If bankruptcy is emergency room surgery, Mr. McCullough was the chief surgeon, shuttling back and forth between operating rooms accompanied by a horde of junior partners constantly feeding him information on their patients' condition. When he wasn't dissecting voluminous pleadings and contracts, he was besieged by calls from attorneys, particularly the 212'ers.

"If you're the lead attorney, they don't want to work with anyone else," he says.

He says he logged more than 2,800 billable hours annually, flying to New York three times in a single day on one occasion. When he managed to stay in Pittsburgh, he'd roll into his Green Tree home well past midnight and unwind in front of television before snatching a few hours of sleep and returning to a daily grind he describes as "a fog."

"I'd put on 'Beverly Hills Cop' just to clear out my brain. I wore out the first 10 minutes of that tape," he recalls.

The cases were a boon to BI, which collected millions of dollars in fees. The windfall would have swelled most attorneys' egos, but didn't have that effect on the firm's rain maker.

"He was never an ogre about it," says a former BI attorney who asked not to be identified.

However, fees were probably a factor in his becoming a judge. Near the end of the AI case, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Joseph L. Cosetti ordered BI to refund about $1.5 million of fees previously approved by the court.

"A lot of lawyers took that opportunity to take pot shots at Bruce," the former BI attorney remarks. "He was bitterly disappointed by how the firm conducted itself."

Judge McCullough acknowledges that BI partners removed from the facts of the case were probably upset by the unfavorable publicity the incident generated.

But there were other, more important reasons he became a judge. By the time the marathon cases were over, BI was a much different firm than it was before they began. With his two biggest clients no longer requiring his services, he had to find his place in the larger firm.

"I wasn't as sure I wanted to be a lawyer any more," he says.

When Judge Cosetti's job opened up, he was intrigued but worried about the substantial pay cut. Bankruptcy court judges are paid $151,984, less than what federal district judges, who handle civil and criminal cases, and some state judges receive. He talked it over with his wife Kathy, a secretary he met during the Wheeling-Pitt case.

"God love her. She said 'If that's what you want to do, let's do it,' " he recalls.

He says Kathy, his second wife, is the person he admires the most, explaining "there's nothing she can't do." Another is Clint Eastwood, because he is demanding, but doesn't ask anyone to do what he wouldn't do himself.

"He doesn't mind being a loner. He's kind of defined himself," he says.

Judge McCullough began his 14-year term in 1995 and, three years later, earned some notoriety in his handling of the massive Allegheny Health, Education and Research Foundation bankruptcy. His intemperate remarks and disgust with the fraud involved, coupled with the judge's Montana roots, prompted comparisons to a frontier judge.

His work in the Pittsburgh Penguins bankruptcy, a case he didn't preside over, draws favorable reviews. U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Bernard Markovitz appointed him mediator, relying on him to resolve a host of disputes that, left unresolved, would have meant losing the hockey team. For Judge McCullough, that meant knocking a few heads together, summoning attorneys to his chambers and telling them no one was eating until the issue at hand was settled, tactics a judge can't employ.

"He was extraordinary in that role," says Mr. Campbell, who represented Mario Lemieux. "When he acts as a mediator, he has infinitely more patience and charm than when he sits on the bench."

He's convinced the Penguins would not be in Pittsburgh if it hadn't been for Judge McCullough, saying he had the right blend of experience, skill and aggressiveness for the job. The judge understood how each party viewed the issues and what they needed in order to say "yes," Mr. Campbell says.

"The Penguins mediation was the most fun," Judge McCullough says, adding that he'd consider being a full-time mediator if there were enough of a market.

"If they were all Penguins things, I'd do it in a minute, but we don't have that many Penguins type of cases."

Much of a bankruptcy judge's work is tedious, including hearings on whether bankrupt individuals can afford the $5,000, 10 percent interest loan on their 1997 Ford.

Many times, monthly income and expense schedules debtors are required to file indicate they can't afford the payments. But by the time their lawyers appear before the judge, they've frequently discovered new sources of income to justify keeping the car.

"The schedules say they don't have the money. ... Were you lying on the schedules or not?" Judge McCullough recently demanded of one flustered attorney who repeatedly relied on unreported income.

Judge McCullough isn't the only bankruptcy judge facing a hefty docket of personal bankruptcy cases sometimes handled by lawyers who are unprepared or inexperienced, but affordable.

"They [bankrupt individuals] are not going to be able to hire the best lawyers out there," Judge McCullough says. "We get a lot of novel arguments that don't have any basis in the law. That's not bad. You just deal with them and go on."

Moreover, what passes for a "big" bankruptcy case in Pittsburgh these days pales in comparison to Judge McCullough's heyday as an attorney. Wheeling-Pitt and AI affected the lives of thousands of workers and retirees. Le-Nature's and Pittsburgh Brewing, the two high-profile cases currently before him, involve a few hundred.

Even the so-called big cases aren't much different from the mundane matters that predominate a judge's case load.

"You may have to listen to a little more hot air, but bottom line, the issues are the same," Judge McCullough says. "The more experience you have, the fewer the number of real challenges."

The nature of the work makes some wonder whether it is enough of a challenge for him. A few privately suggest he isn't happy.

As of now, Judge McCullough plans to re-enlist for a year at a time when his term expires in 2009.

"I don't know. We'll see," he says.

Lawyers like judges who can be led, but given his intellect, experience and temperament, Judge McCullough usually has a pretty good idea of where a case is going and doesn't want lawyers to waste time -- or their client's money -- getting there.

To some, that means he'll seldom change his mind.

"People perhaps would like him to be a little bit more blind," says one attorney who's known him for two decades.

Others say Judge McCullough's brusqueness is just his way of identifying attorneys who are blowing smoke. They say if you're prepared to stand up to him, you'll get a fair hearing.

"I've been in front of Judge McCullough hundreds of times," says veteran bankruptcy attorney Robert Bernstein. "As long as I have something intelligent and interesting to say, he'll always listen to me. He doesn't always agree with me."

The informed decisiveness that supporters say is Judge McCullough's greatest asset, others view as his greatest liability. Either assessment may not draw an argument from the judge.

"They might actually be one and the same," he says.

The judge's philosophy is: "Say what you mean, get it over with and I'll decide." It's an objective he shares with his black-robed colleagues. While they go about their jobs quietly, Judge McCullough remains as blunt as he was in dispatching the New York lawyer nearly two decades ago.

"A lot of people don't like that," he says. "Am I hard to sway? Maybe, but that doesn't mean I don't have an open mind."