He is well known internationally for acting as chief prosecutor for the USSR at the 1946 trial of the major Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg.

After the arrest of Lavrentiy Beria in 1953, Rudenko was a judge at the closed trial at which Stalin's last secret police chief was sentenced to death.

[5] As Procurator General of the Soviet Union, Rudenko played a major role in devising measures to deal with the growing dissident movement within the USSR.

In 1967, he and then KGB chairman Vladimir Semichastny submitted proposals as to how to deal with those defending the writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky during and after their trial, without provoking a strong reaction abroad or within the country.

[6] One measure, proposed jointly with Yuri Andropov in late 1972, was to reduce the number of arrests and convictions by reinforcing the issue of "prophylactic" warnings to individuals, cautioning them that their activities could lead to prosecution under Articles 70 and 1901 of the RSFSR Criminal Code.