In 1906, the U.S. congress established a special court for the "District of China" the United States Court for China, based in the Shanghai International Settlement which had extraterritorial power to try United States Citizens in China. Wilfley was appointed the first judge of this court by President Theodore Roosevelt in July 1906. With no obligation to follow the strictures of the constitution or local law, there were many complaints by American expatriates, especially one by Lorrin Andrews, former Attorney General of the Territory of Hawaii, who charged that Wilfley had voided a will by a person leaving some of his money to the Catholic Church because of his prejudice against it. In the pages of the news magazine The Cosmopolitan, Wilfley was called The Most Hated Man in China. His offense was that with the assistance of the United States Attorney he closed down the houses of prostitution in Shanghai known as "The American Houses." "Seventeen of them departed that evening on one steamship, and a dozen on another craft. In two weeks half a hundred women had voluntarily enrolled themselves as former residents of Shanghai...It was an exodus, a hegira...If there is an American girl in any disorderly house, Wilfley and his district attorney do not know of it." On February 20, 1908, United States Representative George E. Waldo introduced articles of impeachment against Wilfley and the resolution was referred to the Judiciary Committee. Leaving the court in chaos, Wilfley traveled halfway around the world to attend the hearings in Washington, D.C. Theodore Roosevelt came to Wilfley's defense. He wrote a letter to his Secretary of State, Elihu Root, where he stated..."It is clear that Judge Wilfley has been attacked not because he has done evil, but because he has done good.....If the attack were to succeed the beneficiaries would be every keeper of a house of prostitution, every swindling lawyer, every man who lives by blackmailing corruption in the cities of the Far East.” The minority leader in the House of Representatives, John Sharp Williams, a Democrat, called for an investigation of Roosevelt, asserting that he was interfering with the Congressional investigation. "If these charges against the President prove true… I shall introduce a resolution calling for a thorough investigation of this intrusion of the President of the United States on the rights of members of this House." On May 8, 1908, the United States House Committee on the Judiciary submitted a report, H.R. Rep. No. 60-1626, to the House recommending against impeachment. In November 1908, Henry David O'Shea, the editor of the China Gazette in Shanghai was prosecuted in the British Supreme Court for China and Corea for criminal libel against Wilfley relating to an article published in the China Gazette in August 1908 concerning the charges against Wilfley and Wilfley's testimony to Congress. O'Shea was convicted by a jury and sentenced to 2 months imprisonment. Despite O'Shea's conviction, the situation was so poisoned, Wilfley resigned at the end of 1908 and returned to the U.S. for good. He was succeeded as judge by Rufus Thayer.
Later life
Wilfley thereafter practiced in Missouri and New York. In 1909, Clark University conferred an LL.D on him. In 1911, the Chinese government hired him to investigate the Torreón massacre, in which over 300 Chinese were killed. On January 27, 1917, Wilfley married Belle L. Zabriskie, widow of entrepreneur Alanzo M. Zabriskie. Wilfley was practicing in New York at the time.
