David Brand, Lord Brand

David William Robert Brand, Lord Brand QC (21 October 1923 – 14 April 1996) was a Scottish lawyer and judge. He had a conservative outlook on life, and as a judge he had a reputation for both speedy decisions and severe sentences.

His university education was interrupted by service in the British Army during World War II. He then became an advocate, and after a career as a prosecutor, he was a sheriff in southern Scotland from 1968 to 1970. He was Solicitor-General for Scotland from 1970 to 1972, and then served from 1972 to 1989 as a Senator of the College of Justice. In 1994, he was briefly an appellate judge in Botswana.

Brand was born in Edinburgh on 21 October 1923, to a Roman Catholic family from north-east Scotland. His father was a sheriff-substitute and writer to the Signet, who became Sheriff of Dumfries and Galloway and moved the family to Dumfries, where Brand was raised. His father died when he was nine years old, but with financial assistance from an uncle he was educated at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, England, before entering the University of Edinburgh aged 16.

In 1942, Brand interrupted his studies to join the army. He was commissioned into the 11th battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, and in 1944 volunteered for transfer to the King's African Rifles. He fought with his regiment in the Burma Campaign, ending the war with the rank of captain.

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