Born July 17 (30), 1907, in the village of Nosovka, in what is now Chernigov Oblast. Soviet jurist. Procurator-general of the USSR; state councillor of justice. Hero of Socialist Labor (1972). Member of the CPSU since 1926.
Son of a poor peasant, Rudenko graduated from the Moscow Law School and completed the Higher Law Courses of the All-Union Academy of Law (1941). Beginning in 1929 he worked in agencies of the procurator’s office. From 1944 to 1953 he served as procurator of the Ukrainian SSR and in 1953 became procurator general of the USSR. Rudenko was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1956 and became a full member in 1961. He was a delegate to the Eighteenth through Twenty-fourth Congresses of the CPSU and a deputy to the third through ninth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In 1945 and 1946 he was the chief prosecutor on behalf of the USSR at the Nuremberg Trials.
Rudenko holds honorary doctorates in law from the Humboldt University of Berlin (1960) and Charles University in Prague (1966). He has been awarded five Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and various medals.