Born near Springfield, Missouri, Dudley Wooten's parents moved the family to Texas during the Civil War. He graduated from Princeton in 1875, and briefly attended Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. In 1880, he received his law degree from the University of Virginia; he was admitted to the bar in Austin, Texas that year. Wooten served as prosecuting attorney of Austin for two years beginning in 1884, then moved to Dallas in 1888, where he served as a judge of the district court. In 1898 and 1899, Wooten was a member of the Texas state house of representatives. As a Texas representative, Wooten was sent as a delegate to the National Antitrust Conference in Chicago, and later to the National Tax Conference in Buffalo, NY. In 1900, he was elected as a Democrat to Congress, serving from 1901 to 1903. At the conclusion of his term, he moved to Seattle, Washington, where he continued to practice law. In 1919, Wooten was appointed by the governor of Washington to serve as a member of the State Board of Higher Curricula. From 1924 to 1928, he served as a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Wooten died while visiting Austin, TX in 1929.