Wife of Trump's VP pick, who clerked for Roberts and Kavanaugh, leaves her firm
Usha Chilukuri Vance and her husband, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), attend the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Former president Donald Trump has chosen Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate in the 2024 election. On the first day of the Republican National Convention, Vance, 39, strode onto the floor alongside his wife, Usha, whom he met at Yale Law School.
Vance has publicly praised his wife in interviews, calling her “brilliant” and “way more accomplished than I am.”
Here’s what to know about Usha Vance.
She has degrees from Yale and Cambridge
Usha Chilukuri Vance, 38, was raised in San Diego to Indian immigrants; her mother is a microbiologist and provost at University of California at San Diego, while her father is an engineer, according to the Times of San Diego. Her parents are Hindu, she told Fox & Friends in a recent interview, crediting it as something that “made them really good people.” In the same interview, J.D. Vance said that his wife was supportive when he tried to reengage with his Christian faith in recent years, even though she was not of the same religion.
She received a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University and holds a master’s of philosophy from the University of Cambridge. She studied at the British university on a Gates Cambridge scholarship, a prestigious prize awarded to outstanding applicants from countries outside the United Kingdom to pursue a postgraduate degree. Her final project focused on “the methods used for protecting printing rights in seventeenth-century England,” according to her biography on the university’s website.
She then went on to study at Yale Law School, where she met J.D. Vance, and served in editorial positions at the Yale Law Journal and the Yale Journal of Law & Technology.
She resigned from her law firm after Trump picked J.D. Vance
Usha Vance most recently worked as a litigator at law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson in its San Francisco and D.C. offices. Her work focused on fields including higher education, local government, entertainment and technology, according to an archived version of her professional biography, which has now been taken down. She previously clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh while he was at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the biography said.
Vance resigned from her job after Trump selected J.D. Vance as his running mate. “Usha has informed us she has decided to leave the firm,” Munger, Tolles & Olson said in a statement Monday. “Usha has been an excellent lawyer and colleague, and we thank her for her years of work and wish her the best in her future career.”
In a Monday statement to SFGate, Usha said she resigned from the firm “in light of today’s news … to focus on caring for our family,” adding that she was “forever grateful for the opportunities I’ve had at Munger and for the excellent colleagues and friends I’ve worked with over the years.”
Vance’s resignation follows in the footsteps of Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Harris, who took a leave of absence from his law firm after Joe Biden announced Harris as his running mate, and permanently left the job after her election four years ago.
Outside of law, Vance has been a board member of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra since 2020, according to her LinkedIn profile.
J.D. Vance calls her ‘way more accomplished than I am’
J.D. and Usha Vance married in 2014 and have three children, Ewan, Vivek, and Mirabel.
J.D. Vance has given several interviews praising his wife, calling her a “powerful female voice” and “so impressive.”
“Usha definitely brings me back to Earth a little bit and if I maybe get a little bit too cocky or a little too proud I just remind myself that she is way more accomplished than I am,” Vance said in an interview on the Megyn Kelly Show podcast in 2020. “I’m one of those guys who really benefits from having, like, a sort of powerful female voice on his left shoulder saying, ‘don’t do that, do do that’ - it just is important,” he added.
“People look at her credentials and think that she’s so impressive … people don’t realize just how brilliant she is,” he said of his wife, adding that she can digest 1,000-page books in hours and “just absorb the information incredibly.”
He joked that she is “terrible” to argue with at home: “She uses so much facts and logic,” he said.
She was a registered Democrat in 2014
As of 2014, Usha Vance was a registered Democrat, but more recent records show that as of 2022 she was a registered Republican. While J.D. Vance has embraced a wide range of issues—criticizing U.S. aid to Ukraine, introducing a ban on gender-affirming care for minors, praising authoritarian leaders, breaking with the Republican Party’s economic orthodoxy on several policy issues—his wife has been quieter on political issues.
In a Fox & Friends interview aired last month, she was far more coy about enunciating any political causes she may champion if her husband becomes vice president. “I think we might be getting a little ahead of ourselves,” she said. “We’re really just focused right now on being a family and supporting J.D.”
Asked how she might cope with the increased attention that would come with the job, she said: “I don’t know that anyone is ever ready for that kind of scrutiny. I think we found the first campaign that he embarked on to be a shock … but it was an adventure,” referring to her husband’s 2022 Senate run. “I’m not raring to change anything about our lives right now, but I really believe in J.D., and I really love him so we’ll just see what happens,” she added.
In 2022, she took part in a political ad campaign for Vance as he ran for Senate in Ohio, where she described him as “an incredible father” and “my best friend” amid a montage of images of Vance as a child and playing with their children. Vance wrote in the accompanying Instagram caption: “I love our first ad, where my favorite person tells my story.”
Asked how he might fare in a political debate with Vice President Harris, Vance told Fox & Friends: “I have to debate this litigator all the time,” jokingly referring to his wife.
