NEWARK--The walls were closing in on Bridget Anne Kelly.

She had told her boss, Kevin O'Dowd, the governor's chief of staff, about what she knew about a traffic study, and about allegations of political retribution involving lane closures at the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, she said on her second day on the stand.

"Now he's having a memory issue," Kelly testified.

Even worse, she said, was that she repeatedly told Gov. Chris Christie himself.

"He's having a memory issue too," she declared, graphically recounting the moment at a senior staff meeting in December 2013 when the governor demanded to know if anyone knew about the lane closures, and nobody spoke up.

So she said she began deleting incriminating emails pointing to her own knowledge.

"Nothing made any sense," she said tearfully. "I panicked as everyone else forgot they knew about it."

Her decision to attempt a cover-up of her involvement came, she said, as the Bridgegate scandal began to grow and she came to see the governor and his inner circle closing ranks.

She recalled finding herself slowly coming to the realization that she was likely being made a scapegoat in the affair, she said.

Immediately after the staff meeting, she said she spoke to O'Dowd.

"I said 'Kevin, we spoke last night. I knew about the traffic study. You knew about the traffic study. The governor knew about the traffic study. Now there's a subpoena for documents,'" she said she told him.

Kelly said O'Dowd didn't say much/

But the next day at a Dec. 13, 2013, press conference, Christie declared that none of his staff had any inkling of what happened in Fort Lee.

"Everyone's life depended on Governor Christie. Including mine," she said, breaking down on the stand. "By Dec. 13, this was evident that this was something larger than me."

She said she felt like she had entered an "alternative universe." She noted that most of the other senior staff were long-time associates of the governor, but she did not have deep ties to him.

Some of her deleted messages were later recovered by others in the governor's office, she said. And a month later, Kelly was fired by the governor after her infamous email saying it was "time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee" was released by a legislative committee investigating the lane closures.

On the day she was fired, Kelly said she got a call from the governor's office telling her not to come in that day. When she tried to return home, she said she found television trucks, reporters and photographers camped out on her front lawn. She then went to her mother's house only to find more reporters and television crews there.

"They were there too. I felt like I was losing my mind," she said through tears, describing how her phone did not stop ringing and she began getting hundreds of emails, some supportive and some hateful.

She eventually ended up at another relative's house.

The night before she was terminated, however, Kelly said she got an unsolicited call from a prominent criminal defense attorney who briefly served as her first lawyer.

"He was told to contact me," she testified. She never mentioned his name, but first represented by Walter Timpone, nominated earlier this year by Christie and later confirmed as a justice on the New Jersey Supreme Court.

Kelly testified that the attorney told her that everything was she was going to be fine. "That a job would be found for me. And that it would be okay," she said.

Kelly replaced Timpone two weeks later with Michael Critchley.

A spokeswoman for the judiciary said Timpone declined comment.

Federal prosecutors allege the lane shutdowns at the George Washington Bridge in September 2013 were orchestrated as political vendetta to punish Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich with massive traffic jams, in retaliation for his refusal to endorse Christie for re-election.

On trial with Kelly is Bill Baroni, the one-time deputy executive director of the Port Authority, which operates the bridge.

Kelly last week testified she thought the lane closures were part of a legitimate traffic study concocted by David Wildstein, a political operative hired to a $150,000 patronage job at the Port Authority, who told her he wanted to eliminate toll lanes at the bridge earmarked for local Fort Lee traffic. Kelly said Wildstein believed the dedicated lanes were unfair and caused traffic from the main approaches to the bridge to back up because there there were not enough toll lanes at the plaza.

She said Wildstein told her that while there would be some initial traffic issues in Fort Lee, drivers would soon adapt. And in the end, he promised that Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo would be able to claim credit for fixing congestion at the bridge.

Kelly told jurors she first ran the idea by Christie in August 2013 and he okayed it. She said she again spoke to the governor as traffic chaos increased in Fort Lee and news reports surfaced suggesting the shutdowns were part of a political revenge plot.

"It's a Port Authority project," Kelly recalled Christie responding. "Let Wildstein handle it."

In her testimony Monday, Kelly also addressed a controversial email she sent to Wildstein while traffic was paralyzed in Fort Lee.

"Is it wrong that I'm smiling?" Kelly texted Wildstein on the second day of the traffic jams in Fort Lee.

"They're children of Buono voters," Wildstein responded, referring to Barbara Buono, the former Democratic state senator who challenged Christie in the 2013 gubernatorial race.

Kelly insisted she "wasn't sitting there smiling" or reveling in delight.

"It was mixed emotions," she recalled of the text exchange with Wildstein. "I guess it was good that traffic was moving along quicker. But, ... it better that children are sitting and are delayed, or is it better that the majority of commuters are moving faster? I was certainly not sitting there gloating that children were sitting in traffic."

Kelly, along with Baroni, who was Wildstein's boss, is charged with nine felony counts related to her role in the scheme Wildstein admitted was an act of political revenge.

Wildstein pleaded guilty to his role and served as the key witness for the prosecution.

Evidence shown during the trial showed Kelly and Wildstein spoke numerous times during the closures. She said he assured her that the Port Authority had been in contact with Fort Lee officials, despite news reports the week of the traffic jams that contradicted his claim.

"He convinced me to believe," Kelly said.

At least one piece of evidence shown to the jury appeared to buttress her defense.

The day after local lanes were restored, Kelly emailed Wildstein a sentence referring to a news article in the "Road Warrior," a transportation column in The Bergen Record.

"Check out the Road Warrior. I'm confused," Kelly wrote on Sept. 14, 2013. The column made reference to the closures being political in nature.

"Now, there's a third article in two days saying the same thing, that it was political retribution,' Kelly said. "I was very confused."

Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewArco or on Facebook. Follow NJ.com Politics on Facebook.

Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TedShermanSL. Facebook: @TedSherman.reporter.