National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairwoman Elizabeth Dole (N.C.) plans to announce today that she has hired Linda Bond, the wife of Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), to be the committee’s new finance director.

While working full time at the NRSC, Bond will continue to hold the title of partner at Catignani and Bond, a Washington, D.C.-based Republican fundraising firm she co-founded two years ago. She will start work at the committee on Monday.

“Linda is one of the best in the business and we are thrilled to have her joining the team,” Dole said in a statement. “She is such a talented and prolific fundraiser who has extensive experience on a national level.”

Bond will succeed Nicole Sexton, who served as NRSC finance director last cycle and agreed to stay on for the first part of the 2006 cycle to get the fundraising operation off the ground under Dole.

This will be Bond’s second stint at the NRSC. During the 2002 cycle she served as development director under then-Chairman Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), heading the committee’s major donor program.

Bond and Linus Catignani, Frist’s fundraiser who served as NRSC finance director during the 2002 cycle, formed their fundraising firm in 2003. Catignani’s client list includes Frist’s leadership committee, Volunteer PAC, and Sen. Bond. The firm also did work last cycle for Progress for America, the leading Republican 527 group.

Bond was finance director for Steve Forbes’ failed 1996 and 2000 presidential campaigns, and she has also done fundraising work for Empower America.

She grew up in Gladstone, Mo., a suburb of Kansas City and married Kit Bond in 2002, the second marriage for both.

Kit Bond serves as co-chairman of the Republican Senate Council, one of the NRSC’s fundraising programs.

In the first six months of the cycle, the NRSC trailed all of the partisan campaign committees in both overall fundraising and cash on hand.

The committee raised $21 million through June, compared to the $22.6 million Senate Democrats had taken in.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ended June with $15.2 million in the bank, while the NRSC had $8 million left in available cash at the end of last month.