I'm afraid in this case Smeg is definitely wrong (and believe me I'm not gloating when I say that).
"I needed her badly" means I didn't need her very well
"I needed her bad" means I needed her to be a bad person. Although, thanks to the vagaries of the English language, it is also grammatically correct to use this to mean 'I needed her very much' it would be far more suitable to say just that and avoid any confusion. Just do a google search for 'badly' and 'adverb' just don't expect a quick answer. The best ink is below.
Night all,
Will (who has a new-found respect for his English teacher)
> Smeg is so right it's unbelievable.
>
> You, in contrast, are not.
>
> Badly is the adverb. In this case, you want to use the
> adverb, not the adjective, which is what bad is. All of
> your uses of the word "bad," every single one of them, are
> informal uses of bad to mean the adverb. Nothing wrong
> with that. It's just not proper. And if we're debating
> minutiae, as you say, well then...
>
> Using bad would be like using good instead of well. "How
> did you do on the exam?" "I did good." That doesn't sound
> horrible to our ears, and neither does bad in your
> examples. But it's wrong. "I did well" is correct.
>
> But yeah, Smeg said it.
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