Usha Chilukuri Vance is entering the scene. This stunning woman is the wife of JD Vance, the Republican senator from Ohio chosen as Donald Trump’s running mate in 2024.
But Vance is a supremely talented woman in her own right: an Ivy League-educated litigator who once clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts.
The couple first met when they were both students at Yale Law School in 2013. In his book Hillbilly Elegy, Vance describes her as his “Yale spiritual guide.”
They married the year after graduating from law school in 2014 and had their first child, Ewan Blaine, in 2017.
Their first child, Ewan Blaine, was born in 2017. They also have a second son, Vivek, and welcomed a daughter, Mirabel, in December 2021. The couple is raising their three children in Cincinnati.
JD and Usha Vance with two of their three sons, Ewan and Vivek
Vance was recently asked if she is prepared for all eyes to be on her if her husband is chosen as Trump’s running mate.
“I don’t know if anyone is prepared for that kind of scrutiny,” Vance told Fox & Friends last month. “I think the first campaign that he embarked on was a surprise to us. It was very different than anything we’d done before, but it was an adventure.”
She told Fox that she’s not eager to change anything in their lives right now, but that she truly believes in her husband and loves him, so they’ll see what happens.
Vance, the daughter of Indian immigrants and whose real name was Usha Chilukuri, was raised in suburban San Diego by a mechanical engineer and a biologist. She has said she was raised in a religious Hindu family.
From California she moved across the country to attend college and attended Yale University where she majored in history. After that, she continued her studies at Cambridge University as a Gates Cambridge Scholar.
At Yale Law School, she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal and Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal of Law & Technology.
Vance is now an attorney at the San Francisco and Washington, D.C., law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson, where she focuses on complex civil litigation and appeals.
Usha and JD Vance with their three children. They welcomed their first child in 2017. Their daughter Mirabel was born in December 2021.
Usha Chilukuri Vance with her husband JD Vance arrives at his 2022 election night party after being declared the winner of the Ohio Senate race on November 8, 2022.
The couple celebrate on election night 2022 after Vance won the Senate race. She described her first campaign in Ohio as an “adventure”
When her husband joined the Ohio Senate race in 2022, Vance could be seen across the state at campaign events.
She also appeared in his early campaign ads where she talked about raising Vance and having him by her side as a husband and father to her children.
She described him as an amazing father and her best friend.
JD Vance kissed by his wife Usha on the night of the Ohio Senate primary on May 3, 2022
At Munger, Tolles & Olson, Vance’s cases have focused on a wide range of issues, including higher education, local government, entertainment and technology.
Prior to joining the firm, she clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts.
She also clerked for Judge Brett Kavanaugh when he was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, as well as for Judge Amul Thapar on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.
At Yale Law School, she also participated in the Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic, the Freedom of the Press and Access to Information Clinic, and the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project.
Asked last month what issue she would focus on if she were to become second lady, Vance declined to say, saying they were getting too far ahead of themselves to even consider it and were focused on her family.