Not long after Forquer became the state senator for Sangamon County, Illinois, the legislature elected Ford a state court judge for northern Illinois (9th circuit). Ford would serve two terms (notwithstanding his resignation in 1837 to care for Forquer, who had tuberculosis and had moved to Cincinnati for medical treatment and where he died), as well as one term as a municipal judge in the newly chartered city of Chicago. Judge Ford presided over the initial action in the Jean Baptiste Beaubien land claim (concerning the land under the soon-to-be-decommissioned Fort Dearborn), and his decision (against the transferee of the long-term settler and trader next to the partially-decommissioned fort) was ultimately upheld by the United States Supreme Court in Wilcox v. Jackson.