On September 26, 1966, Real was nominated by President Lyndon B. Johnson to a new seat on the United States District Court for the Central District of California created by 80 Stat. 75. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on October 20, 1966, and received his commission on November 3, 1966. He served as Chief Judge of the district from 1982 to 1993. In 2006, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., introduced a resolution permitting the Judiciary Committee to investigate Real to see whether impeachment hearings were warranted. The impeachment effort was later dropped. In 2008, Real received a public reprimand for his handling of a bankruptcy matter. Real assumed senior status on November 4, 2018. He was the last federal court judge in active service to have been appointed by President Johnson. He died on June 26, 2019, aged 95.
He was known for his January 22, 1970 decision ordering Pasadena Unified School District to adopt a plan to correct racial imbalance at all levels. "It is ordered, adjudged and decreed that the defendants, Pasadena City Board of Education, Mrs. LuVerne LaMotte, Albert C. Lowe, Bradford C. Houser, John T. Welsh, and Joseph J. Engholm, as members of the Pasadena City Board of Education, and Ralph W. Hornbeck, as Superintendent of Schools... are enjoined from discriminating of the basis of race... in the operation of the district." His decision: "Commencing in September of 1970, there shall be no school in the District elementary or junior high or senior high school, with a majority of any minority students." The board of education and the superintendent adopted a forced busing plan to meet the new legal mandate. Real did not order forced busing; that was creation of the Pasadena Unified School District.
Other cases
Real was noted for his judicial behavior in the 2000s. From 2001 to 2009, he had custody of disputed Filipino assets, for which he had to account in 2009. A federal appeals court panel ruled that his accounting "plainly fails to account for all transactions involving the assets during the eight years they were held in the clerk of court's custody. It doesn't give the reader even a basic understanding of the path by which $33.8 million worth of assets deposited in September 2000 came to be worth $34.7 million today". On January 11, 2012, the Ninth Circuit removed Real from the controversial case of Alexander Sanchez, a former MS-13gang leader turned gang interventionist. In November 2012 it was reported that Real had shown a pattern of making rulings in favor of companies in which he owned stock.
