He played Branch concurrently in Law & Order and Trial by Jury, making him one of the few actors to have a regular role on two TV series simultaneously as the same character.

Branch's administration is a sharp contrast to that of Lewin, as he supports the death penalty and does not believe in the existence of a constitutional right to privacy.

[10] His legal and political conservatism often puts him in conflict with Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), a relative center leftist, as well as his previous assistant DA Serena Southerlyn (Elisabeth Röhm), a liberal idealist.

[12] While his legal philosophy is decidedly conservative, he is not blindly partisan; he ascribes cynical, political motives to drug prohibition, refers to the U.S. National Guard as "the Dan Quayle Brigade", and is not averse to seeking alternatives to the death penalty when he thinks it appropriate.

Although he is personally pro-life, he describes himself as even more "pro-law", and orders Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Casey Novak (Diane Neal) to arrest a doctor who deliberately misled a young pregnant woman to ensure her pregnancy would develop past the legal time limit for the procedure, thus prompting her to desperately ask her boyfriend to assault her to induce a still birth.

[14] In May 2007, Fred Thompson left the cast of Law & Order to run for the Republican Party's nomination for the 2008 United States presidential election.

"[17] This contradicts a prior statement he made to McCoy, several episodes earlier, telling the latter in admonishment: "You're a helluva prosecutor, Jack.

In October 2009,[18] Executive ADA Michael Cutter (Linus Roache) tells McCoy that the producers of a reality TV show set on Long Island want Branch to be a judge, where he will preside in a trial featuring the heads of two dysfunctional households who are both suspects in a murder.