Michael Branson is a Senior Deputy City Attorney in the Land Use & Planning Unit of the Advisory Division. He advises on a range of land use and planning issues, including strategic planning, CEQA compliance, entitlement processing, and planning code legislative initiatives.

Prior to joining the City Attorney’s Office in 2019, Mr. Branson practiced land use and municipal law at Buchalter in San Francisco and Berliner Cohen in San Jose. He advised both public entities and developers on a wide variety of land use and environmental compliance matters, including CEQA, planning entitlements, and land use litigation.

Mr. Branson graduated from UCLA with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry, where he was also a member of the UCLA Marching Band. He received his law degree from Santa Clara University School of Law, where he served as Senior Articles Editor for the Santa Clara Law Review and Editor in Chief of the law school newspaper, The Advocate. After law school, he served as Congressional Assistant and Counsel to Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren