Mr Justice Munby, sitting at the high court in London, said the trade was causing "untold harm to children, untold misery to their birth mothers and untold heartache to adopters".
He ordered that copies of his judgment should go to the director of public prosecutions, to consider whether criminal charges should be laid against Jay Carter, the unqualified independent "social worker" whose "dangerously misleading" home study reports had supported the adoption. She has been heavily criticised in previous high court cases.
He also ordered copies to be sent to the Department of Health, the Home Office, the attorney general, the US embassy, the Texas attorney general and the Texas judge who made the adoption order.
After hearing the case in private, the judge said he was giving his judgment in public because "there is, I am satisfied, a pressing need for the events I am about to describe to be brought to the attention of the appropriate public authorities and, indeed, the public at large.
"This is merely the latest of a number of cases of inter-country adoptions where not merely has the process ended in disaster for the child, but that process has been facilitated by the criminal misconduct of so-called professional persons operating commercially in this country."
Mrs Carter, who has an address in the north-east, also prepared the home study report in the case of the "internet twins" brought to the UK for adoption by Alan and Judith Kilshaw, but returned to the US after a high court judge ruled that the children were at risk of significant harm with the Kilshaws.
In the latest case, a four-times married mother of six, who had cancer and had taken an overdose in front of her other children, adopted a baby girl born in Houston, Texas.
The adoptive mother, known as C, later committed suicide and her husband, D, has abandoned the girl, M. She is now being cared for by foster parents, and Mr Justice Munby has freed her for adoption in Britain after hearing that M's birth parents had been located in the US, but had since left, leaving no address. An assessment had concluded that M would be at risk of significant emotional and possible physical harm if returned to them.
The adoption was arranged by a Texas agency, now defunct, and in Britain by Mrs Carter. M was born to a 20-year-old unmarried black American mother and a 24-year-old black American father. The white British couple, C, then 43, and D, then 44, took her three days after birth.
In May 2001, C left D and took the baby, together with her own two youngest children. Three months later C committed suicide.
It was known when the Texas adoption order was made that C had been married four times and had six children of her own, and that the social services had been involved with her family for many years.
Her son had been placed on the child protection register after being assaulted by a boyfriend and a daughter had alleged that she had been indecently assaulted by one of C's husbands.
It was also known that C had applied to adopt in Britain after having a hysterectomy and discovering she had cancer, but had been turned down, and that she had been admitted to hospital in 1998 after a serious overdose of painkillers and alcohol in front of her children, but had again taken an overdose in 1999.
