Venal

Can someone explain to me why a venal judge was appointed?

Venal offices were government positions sold by the French state during the Ancien Régime.

A lack of money makes anyone venal. It's natural.

I do not wish to recall this bad time nor the worse that ante-dated my departure, when I was at the mercy of venal doctors and indifferent nurses, dependent on grudged bad service and overpaid inattention, taking a so-called rest cure.

Because lips libertine and and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in the candour of hers; […].

Thus, regimental commands in the army were – as with the judiciary or the financial bureaucracy – venal posts, which were purchased, bequeathed and sold among the nobility.

Though there is a disposition in mankind, to declaim against the corruption and peculation of the present times, as being more venal than formerly; yet, if we look back to different periods, we shall find statesmen and politicians, as selfish and corrupt, […] as those who have lately figured on the political stage.