Mordue grew up as one of five children in Elmira, New York and attended Manlius Military Academy.
[5] Mordue earned the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star, and the Distinguished Service Cross while serving as a captain in the U.S. Army in the Vietnam War from 1966 to 1968.
[6] Upon the recommendation of Senator Alfonse D'Amato, President Bill Clinton nominated Mordue to replace Rosemary S. Pooler on the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York in July 1998.
[8] As a prosecutor in the Onondaga County District Attorney's Office, Mordue successfully prosecuted Robert Garrow, a notorious serial killer convicted of murdering three campers in the Adirondacks and a teenage girl in Syracuse in 1973.
[9] He also ruled in favor of a school district censoring a student newspaper's cartoon of stick figures in sexual positions in R.O.