MILWAUKEE, Wis. — Usha Vance burst into the national spotlight Monday as she accompanied her husband, Sen. JD Vance, on the floor of the Republican National Convention after Donald Trump announced him as his running mate.
Usha, 38, joined her 39-year-old husband as he accepted the nomination in an acclimation vote by delegates — after the couple jubilantly greeted convention attendees, including Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine.
The possible second lady, a graduate of Yale Law School, is a civil litigation attorney who clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
She also clerked for Justice Brett Kavanaugh while he was a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
The Vances have three children.
Who is Trump’s VP pick, JD Vance?
- Trump announced Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his pick for vice president.
- The 39-year-old rose to prominence after writing his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” reflecting on his time growing up in a working class Ohio family.
- Vance would be the second-youngest vice president to ever assume office if Trump was elected for another term.
- In 2020, Vance apologized to Trump for his previous criticism and came to be a supporter. He deleted his previous critical posts of Trump and met with the then-president about his Senate run.
- President Biden dismissed Vance as “a clone of Trump on the issues” following the announcement.
- He was first elected to the Senate in the 2022 midterm cycle.
A professional profile on the website of law firm Munger Tolles & Olson, where Usha Vance worked from 2019 until recently, says she worked with a “wide variety of sectors, including higher education, local government, entertainment, and technology.”
A daughter of Indian immigrants, Vance, whose maiden name is Chilukuri, was raised in the San Diego area.
She would be the first Hindu spouse of a president or vice president — and would succeed second gentleman Doug Emhoff, who was the first Jewish spouse of a president of vice president.
The couple was married in 2014 in Kentucky and were blessed by a Hindu priest at a different event, according to a New York Times profile.
Usha said she was reluctant to gain greater public exposure in a “Fox & Friends” joint interview with her husband last month.
J.D. Vance’s successful 2022 Senate campaign was “an adventure,” she said, but “I’m not raring to change anything about our lives right now.”
“But I believe in J.D. and I really love him, and so we’ll just sort of see what happens with our life — where we’re open,” she said in the interview.
Vance said that his wife “is not a Christian” but was “very supportive” of his deepening faith as he was baptized in 2018.
“I knew that J.D. was searching for something. This just felt right for him,” she said.
Asked about the challenges of an interfaith marriage, she said, “There are a lot of things that we just agree on, I think, especially when it comes to family life, how to raise our kids. And so I think the answer really is, we just talk a lot.”
The senator joked in the same interview that his wife had prepared him well to debate Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I have to debate this litigator all the time,” he cracked.