A federal judge castigated a New York Times reporter yesterday for allegedly stealing sealed court documents that later became the basis for two front-page scoops about a pharmaceutical company.

The judge, Jack Weinstein of U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, accused the reporter of engaging in “reprehensible” conduct to obtain documents dealing with Eli Lilly’s anti-psychotic drug, Zyprexa.

It is unclear whether Judge Weinstein will let the matter rest with yesterday’s opinion, which imposes no penalties on either the reporter, Alex Berenson, or the New York Times. But noting that the opinion describes Mr. Berenson’s actions as illegal, two legal observers said it was possible Judge Weinstein would turn the matter over to a prosecutor to decide if Mr. Berenson should face criminal charges. Judge Weinstein “doesn’t really telegraph what he’s going to do to the reporter,” the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Lucy Dalglish, told The New York Sun yesterday. She added that, by the wording of the order, Judge Weinstein seemed very angry.

“I suppose, one scenario might be that the judge could appoint a … prosecutor to investigate who violated his protective order,” Ms. Dalglish said.

A legal ethicist at New York University, Stephen Gillers, said there “still is the First Amendment question of whether Berenson or the Times can be punished for publishing information that is newsworthy.”

The documents at issue outlined how Eli Lilly had downplayed the diabetes risk of Zyprexa, according to Mr. Berenson’s reporting, which was published in December.

Before arriving on Mr. Berenson’s desk, the documents had traveled across the continent and back again. They were among millions of pages Eli Lilly had turned over to lawyers suing the company on behalf of Zyprexa users. Although they were under Judge Weinstein’s protective order, an expert witness for the plaintiffs, David Egilman, urged an Alaskan attorney, James Gottstein, to subpoena the documents from him and forward them to Mr. Berenson, according to Judge Weinstein’s decision. This transaction appears to have been intended to sidestep the court order.

From testimony given last month by Mr. Gottstein, Judge Weinstein concluded that Mr. Berenson played a central role in the scheme.

“Here, a reporter was deeply involved in the effort to illegally obtain the documents,” Judge Weinstein, who was nominated to the bench by President Johnson, wrote. “Affirmatively inducing the stealing of documents is treated differently from passively accepting stolen documents of public importance for dissemination.”

Citing the Times’s guidebook for reporting, Judge Weinstein accuses Mr. Berenson of violating his own paper’s standards in addition to the court order.

Mr. Berenson last week turned down an invitation from Judge Weinstein to explain the role he played in getting the documents. The decision not to testify, the Times said in a statement sent via e-mail, “resulted in an opinion which vastly overstates Alex’s role in the release of the documents.” “We continue to believe that the articles we published were newsworthy and accurate and we stand by the reporting,” the statement said.

The release of the documents, which are now available on Web sites, has led to “irreparable harm to Lilly by revealing its trade secrets, confidential preliminary research, and merchandising techniques,” Judge Weinstein wrote. Nonetheless, the judge did not order Mr. Berenson to return the documents or refrain from continuing to report on them.

“While Berenson’s conduct in assisting in the stealing of the protected documents was reprehensible, Lily has sought no injunction against him,” Judge Weinstein noted.

Mr. Berenson declined to comment when reached yesterday.

Eli Lilly intends to ask Judge Weinstein for sanctions against Mr. Gottstein and Dr. Egilman, but not against Mr. Berenson, a company spokeswoman said yesterday.

“Our concern is with the individuals who we believe actually violated the court order,” the spokeswoman, Marni Lemons, said.

Still Mr. Berenson could be called forward to explain how he obtained the documents during any sanction hearings against Messrs. Egilman or Gottstein.