An anti-saturation valve assembly (51) for use in a hydraulic system having priority (17) and auxiliary (25) load circuits, the priority circuit providing a priority load signal (19). The anti-saturation valve assembly includes a pressure sensor portion (61) which senses a decrease between pump pressure (23) and the priority load signal (19), and generates a force on a pressure reducing portion (63) to reduce, correspondingly, a pilot pressure (59): The reduced pilot pressure to a pilot valve (35) results in reduced flow to a pilot-operated main control valve (27) in the auxiliary load circuit (25), thus providing anti-saturation protection for the circuit, without throttling a main flow path and wasting substantial hydraulic power.