He was United States Commissioner of Pensions under presidents James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur, and was Treasurer of the Republican National Committee.

[1] Reverend Wade was a graduate of Yale Seminary, a sometime missionary to the Choctaw Indians, and a descendant of William Dudley, one of the earliest settlers of Guilford, Connecticut, in 1639.

After losing 79 percent of his men at the Battle of Gettysburg, and having his right leg amputated on the field, he served as an army inspector and judge advocate and captain in the Veteran Reserve Corps.

Following the end of the war he became a civilian lawyer in 1870, then the U.S. marshal for Indiana in 1879, commissioner of pensions under appointment of Presidents James Garfield and Chester A. Arthur in 1881.

On December 15, 1909, William Wade Dudley died of natural causes in Washington, D.C., and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery a few days afterward.