In 1853 voters chose Ludlam and Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the former director of the New Zealand Company, to represent the electorate of Hutt in New Zealand's 1st Parliament, which opened in Wellington on 24 May the following year.
During the 1850s and 60s, Ludlam's political and social activities brought him into occasional contact with the uncle of his wife-the English-born baronet and former Barbados sugar planter Sir Samuel Osborne-Gibbes.