About Christine
Christine Branstad earned her undergraduate degree in political science from the University of Iowa in 1991 and completed her law degree at Drake University Law School in 1994. Those years in Iowa classrooms and courtrooms established a baseline for a career that has moved between public service, private practice and organizational leadership. She carried the combination of academic and practical training into each subsequent role.
She began practicing in the public sector soon after law school, serving as an assistant county lawyer in Jasper County in 1995. That early experience in local government work was followed by private-firm practice. In 1997 she joined Hopkins & Huebner as an associate. Over the next decade she worked in a series of litigation and in-house positions, including a 2004 role at Wandro, Lyons & Baer and litigation work at EMC in 2006. That same year she took on management responsibilities as director of legal network management and development at Arag Group, and she served as corporate counsel in 2007.
In 2011 she launched Branstad Law. The small-firm phase of her career ran alongside roles in education and nonprofit organizations. In 2012 she taught a course in leadership and community at William Penn University and also began administrative work with the Iowa Independent School Tuition Organization. She later served as president of that organization from 2016 to 2019. The mix of teaching, administration and practice reflects a willingness to move between courtroom, classroom and boardroom.
Throughout her career she has been active in bar and community organizations. She has maintained memberships in the Polk County Bar Association and the Iowa State Bar Association since 1997. She served on the Iowa State Bar Association Professionalism Committee from 2010 to 2015 and held earlier leadership roles in the American Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Division, including chairing its Criminal & Juvenile Justice Committee in 1997–1998. Her local civic involvement includes a stint as treasurer of Ballet Des Moines from 2012 to 2015 and service as vice president of a children’s cancer committee from 2009 to 2015. She has also been affiliated with the Iowa Trial Lawyers Association, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, the Blackstone American Inn of Court and Rotary.
Her experience spans courtroom litigation, in-house counsel responsibilities and nonprofit governance. She has combined those threads in private practice at Branstad Law, where her work concentrates on civil litigation and education-related legal matters.
