A multigrid method has been introduced as a fast alternative to conventional relaxation methods for obtaining a solution to the Reynolds equation for self-acting gas-lubricated bearings. This paper verifies the procedure applied to both static and time-dependent dynamic analyses of plain-cylindrical journal bearings. The method gives successful results with less computational effort compared with single grid-oriented iterative methods. In addition, the new approach does not require a trial and error process to optimize the overrelaxation parameter unlike a successive overrelaxation method. The nonlinear orbit method which is an accurate but time-consuming transient analysis is expected to be reduced to a handy design tool for a complicated bearing system on incorporating the multigrid technique.