[1] She attended the Westminster Schools before matriculating at Davidson College, where she obtained her Bachelor of Arts (B.A.

During this period, she served for three years as the counselor to the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, and for one year as the associate general counsel for rules and legislation at the United States Department of Homeland Security.

[7][8] On September 7, 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Branch to serve as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, to the seat soon vacated by Judge Frank M. Hull, who subsequently assumed senior status on December 31, 2017.

[10] On January 3, 2018, her nomination was returned to the president under Rule XXXI, Paragraph 6 of the United States Senate.

[4] On September 29, 2022, Judge James C. Ho of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit delivered a speech at a Federalist Society conference in Kentucky and said he would no longer hire law clerks from Yale Law School, which he said was plagued by "cancel culture" and students disrupting conservative speakers.

[20] In 2020, she dissented in NAACP v. Alabama,[21] arguing that Congress did not clearly and unambiguously abrogate states’ sovereign immunity from suit under the Voting Rights Act, and that plaintiffs were thus barred by sovereign immunity from suing states under § 2 of the Act.

Branch is a former co-chair of the Homeland Security and National Defense Committee of the Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice of the American Bar Association.