Who Is V.P. Nominee JD Vance’s Wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance?

On the first day of the Republican National Convention, the former president announced his pick of Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate for the 2024 presidential election. Now, voters are asking questions about Vance’s wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance.

Usha is the daughter of two academics who were born in Andhra Pradesh and immigrated to the United States. She met her husband at Yale, where she earned her undergraduate and law degrees.

She spent a year clerking for now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in Washington, D.C., followed by a year clearing for Chief Justice John Roberts. For the past several years, she has worked for the Munger, Tolles and Olson law firm, from which she announced her exit on Monday.

Though she is known for keeping to herself, Usha made an appearance alongside her husband during a Fox & Friends interview, where she affirmed her support for JD to serve as Trump’s vice president.

“I think we found the first campaign that he embarked on to be a shock,” Usha said about JD’s run for the Senate. “It was so different from anything we’d ever done before. But it was an adventure. And so I guess the way that I put it is, I’m not raring to change anything about our lives right now. But I really, you know, believe in JD, and I really love him. And so we’ll just sort of see what happens with our lives.”

In the same interview, JD said Usha has always been supportive of his Christian faith, despite her not coming from the same religion.

“I had never been baptized. You know, I was raised Christian. I’d never been baptized, so I was baptized for the first time in 2018,” JD said. “She was not raised Christian [and] is actually not a Christian. But I remember when I started to reengage with my own faith. She was very supportive.”

Aside from his political career, JD is perhaps best known for his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, in which he writes about his relationship with his wife.

“Usha was like my Yale spirit guide,” he wrote. “She instinctively understood the questions I didn’t even know to ask and she always encouraged me to seek opportunities that I didn’t know existed.”