 After the war, he served as judge of the tenth judicial circuit of Alabama from 1868 until 1873.Pelham was elected as a Republican to the Forty-third Congress (March 4, 1873 – March 3, 1875).When he was not renominated in 1874, Pelham resumed the practice of law in Washington, D.C.. Late in life, he was appointed a clerk in the Treasury Department.