A native of Pella has been just been confirmed by the U.S. Senate to a top job in the U.S. Department of Justice. Forty-four-year-old Rachel Brand will soon be sworn in as the nation’s associate attorney general.
“Although I have not lived in Iowa for some time, I will always consider myself an Iowan,” Brand said during her confirmation hearing earlier this month.
Brand is a 1991 graduate of Pella Christian High School. Brand got a political science degree from the University of Minnesota-Morris and her law degree from Harvard. She was an assistant attorney general during the George W. Bush Administration and President Obama appointed her to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. It’s an agency that works within the White House. She will now be the third-ranking official in the U.S. Department of Justice.
“My first experience with the Justice Department was way back during my 1L summer, when I worked as an honors intern at the FBI’s national security division,” Brand said at her confirmation hearing. “…I have deep admiration and respect for institution of the Department of Justice, for its critical work, for its tradition of independence and for the dedicated public servants — lawyers, law enforcement officers and many others — who’ve worked there across administrations.”
The post Brand takes was created four decades ago within the department and she is the first woman to be appointed as the nation’s associate attorney general.