She served as the United States Associate Attorney General from May 22, 2017, until February 20, 2018, when she resigned to take a job as head of global corporate governance at Walmart.

[9] Brand studied at the University of Minnesota Morris from 1991 to 1995, graduating with high distinction and honors with a Bachelor of Arts in political science.

[14][15] Beginning in 2003,[10] she served as an Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy in the George W. Bush administration where she helped shepherd the Supreme Court nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

[22] Brand dissented from several recommendations included in the PCLOB's 2014 report on NSA's bulk metadata collection program under section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act.

She declined to join in the Board's view that the program was illegal as a statutory matter and argued that, in policy terms, it struck a justifiable balance between privacy and national security and, as such, should not be discontinued.

"[3][31] On February 12, 2018, NBC News reported that Brand quit the Justice Department over fear she might be asked to oversee the Russia probe and had taken a position with Walmart as executive vice president of global governance and corporate secretary.

[35] Brand formerly served as the chairman of the Federalist Society's Litigation Practice Group and as co-chair of the American Bar Association Administrative Law Section's Government Information and Right to Privacy Committee.

"[37] She has also suggested that the National Security Agency ought to develop a set of guidelines beyond the Fair Information Practice Principles, which she alleges are insufficient in the intelligence-gathering context, to govern its own approach to privacy.