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He should have left the courts out of it. It was an ok stop and you alerted the officer. He should have used his discretion and recognized that you were not a threat. Having secured the firearm, he then should have returned it at the end of the stop and simply said "You may want to look into whether or not you can carry like that because I'm not sure if that is ok". End of story.
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And if the headlines later read:
Man Kills Neighbor While Trick or Treating
Officer Jim Friendly stop the suspect last night for a routine traffic stop and knew there was a loaded firearm in the car. Instead of arresting the individual, he told the suspect to "look into whether or not he could legally carry the gun in his glove box" because he was not sure if it was legal or not.
I do not fault this police officer for his actions. (Although I do question why a judge was contacted, if it went to trial, wouldn't he have to recuse himself?) He had a question, he had it answered, he acted based upon that answer.
I "caused" a pretty good accident while I was a police officer in the military. I used my discretion to not apprehend a couple of drunks. I figured I would just have them park their car and give them a ride back to the barracks. A few hours later they decided they would retrieve their car and on the way back to the barracks, ran in to the officers club... Literally. Lucky for me our Wing Commander just chewed my posterior.
Civilian police officers face the chance of lawsuits much more readily than us military police did. Sometimes the better part of discretion is to not take chances. I am glad this worked out for the OP.