Rudes became an assistant professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte in 1999 and was promoted to an associate professor in 2005. As a scholar, he is most well known for writing the Tuscarora Dictionary, which the University of Toronto Press published in 1999. He also published over twenty articles in scholarly journals and helped edit several books. In 2004 Rudes was hired to reconstruct the Powhatan language for use in Terrence Malick's 2005 film The New World. He utilized Colonial-era word lists, along with scholarly work, and filled in linguistic blanks by using better attested Eastern Algonquian languages. Initially, one scene consisting of three pages of dialogue took him one month to reconstruct. Pleased with the results, Malick wanted to film fifty additional scenes in Powhatan. Rudes spent two weeks in a hotel room translating dialogue and then coached actors of how to properly pronounce their lines. His contributions to the film attracted widescale publicity, including a feature story in the Science Section of the New York Times. At Rude's request, the movie studio made his work available to Algonquian tribes located in Virginia so that members could relearn their ancestral language. His work additionally helped dispel a longstanding belief that the term "Chesapeake" meant "Great Shellfish Bay" in Powhatan. Rudes discovered that in actuality, it probably means "Great Water". Impressed by Rudes' work on The New World, director Carter Smith hired him as the Mayan Dialogue Coach for The Ruins.
