Who is Usha Vance, wife of Trump’s vice-presidential candidate?

JD Vance has had several introductions to the American people: as the author of a book on the problems of the white working class, as the newly elected Republican senator in his home state of Ohio, and, on Monday (15), as his party’s candidate for vice president.

His wife, Usha, was by his side on all these occasions.

As the Ohio delegation chanted her husband’s name at the Republican convention in Milwaukee, Usha Vance stood next to the first-term senator and applauded as he was nominated by voice vote to be Donald Trump’s running mate.

Weeks earlier, the lawyer and former paralegal admitted she was not “eager” to completely upend the life she and her husband had built together or face the attention it would generate.

“I don’t know if anyone is really ready for that kind of scrutiny,” she told Fox News last month during a joint interview with the senator at his home in Ohio. “I think we thought the first campaign he did was a shock. It was so different from anything we’ve ever done before. But it was an adventure.”

She added that she was open to seeing how things unfolded.

Now, with JD Vance as Trump’s vice presidential nominee, the couple embarks on an even bigger journey than their 2022 Senate campaign in Ohio.

Trump’s choice of the senator, who is nearly half his age and has three young children with his wife, injected youth into the ticket, which could be an advantage in an election cycle marked by the advancing age of candidates from both major parties.

But the senator, who has been in office since January 2023, is likely to face questions about both his lack of political experience and his transition from a 2016 Trump critic to an heir to the MAGA movement. If his 2022 Senate campaign is any indication, Usha Vance could play a quiet but pivotal role in helping introduce him to the public.

“Sometimes people say he’s changed a lot, but the truth is I’ve known him for so many years, and he’s always been true to himself,” she told Newsmax during a 2022 interview with her husband.

For years, the senator has described his wife as an essential part of his success, dating back to the time the two attended law school together at Yale University, where Usha Vance also graduated. summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree.

In his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” J.D. Vance described her as his “Yale spiritual guide,” helping him navigate life at the elite university where they met.

“She instinctively understood the questions I didn’t even know I should ask and always encouraged me to pursue opportunities I didn’t know existed,” he wrote. The couple married in an interfaith ceremony in Kentucky in 2014 — Usha Vance’s family is Hindu, while her husband converted to Catholicism in 2019.

The daughter of Indian immigrants, Usha Chilukuri grew up in a suburb of San Diego. After college — two stints at Yale and a master’s degree in philosophy from Cambridge University — she served as a law clerk to two U.S. Supreme Court justices: Brett Kavanaugh, when he was on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Columbia Circuit, and Chief Justice John Roberts.

In 2015, she joined the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson, which has offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. She continued to work at the firm between stints as a counsel, where — according to an archived version of her professional biography — she handled “complex civil litigation and appeals” in industries that included “higher education, local government, entertainment and technology, including semiconductors.”

The firm announced Monday that she had resigned.

“Usha has informed us that she has decided to leave the firm,” the firm said in a statement. “Usha has been an excellent lawyer and colleague, and we thank her for her years of service and wish her the best in her future career.”