In 1897, Ridley was appointed a Justice of the High Court and assigned to the Queen's Bench Division, receiving the customary knighthood.

Ridley had been nominated by Lord Halsbury, who had a reputation for appointing unqualified lawyers to the bench on party political grounds.

The Solicitors' Journal described it as "a grave mistake"[6][7] The Law Times wrote that:Unquestionable as are the virtues of Mr. Edward Ridley, Q.C.—for some years the favourite Official referee—no-one will believe that he would have been appointed to the High Court Bench but for his connections...

Ridley established his reputation as a classical scholar with a blank verse translation of Lucan's Pharsalia, first published in 1896 and republished in a revised version in 1919.

On Ridley's death, Sir Frederick Pollock had written: "Sir E. Ridley, good scholar, Fellow of All Souls, successful, sicut dicunt [so they say], as an Official Referee, and by general opinion of the Bar the worst High Court judge of our time, ill-tempered and grossly unfair: which is rather a mystery".