[1] For a brief period he practiced law, entered Democratic politics in Harlem, and was an assistant New York State attorney general in 1942.
At this time, virtually all Black employees of the State Department were sent to and revolved through certain hardship posts derisively called the "Negro Circuit.
In May 1949, Dudley and his staff put together a memorandum which documented the statistics related to African Americans in the State Department, compared to white employees in similar positions.
In the New York state election of 1962, he was the Democratic and Liberal candidate for attorney general but was defeated by the Republican incumbent, Louis Lefkowitz.
[1] In November 1964, Dudley was elected as a justice of the New York State Supreme Court for the First Judicial District (Manhattan and the Bronx), a post he held from 1965 until his retirement in 1985.
[1] The Dudley family summered in the SANS community,[4] buying their lot during the 1950s expansion into Sag Harbor Hills.
[6] In 2022, Dudley was featured in The American Diplomat, a PBS documentary that explores the lives and legacies of three African-American ambassadors during the Cold War.