He was the ninth federal official on whom Articles of Impeachment were served, and only the third to be convicted and removed from office.

That year, Archbald was appointed as a Judge of the Lackawanna County (45th Judicial District) Court of Common Pleas.

[2] After Wrisley Brown investigated charges that Judge Archbald bought coal lands at cheap prices for his personal benefit from railroads and real estate interests involved in litigation before his federal court, and also took a European trip in 1910 paid for by those frequent litigants, the House Judiciary Committee recommended to the United States House of Representatives that he be impeached.

The exact voting division on each article is as follows: Archbald was convicted on Articles I, III, IV, V and XIII and was accordingly removed from office (Article II gained a majority of votes, but not the two-thirds necessary under the U.S. Constitution to convict), and the Senate subsequently voted, by 39 to 35, to order that Archbald be forever disqualified from holding any office under the United States.

Pennsylvania's two Republican Senators, Boies Penrose of Philadelphia, and George T. Oliver of Pittsburgh, had voted against impeachment and lifetime disqualification.

Lawyers eulogized him as a "discriminating practitioner" whose influence "made a deeper impression than any other judge in the history" of Lackawanna County.