JD Vance has had several introductions to the American people: as the author of a book about the problems of the white working class, as a newly elected Republican senator in his home state of Ohio, and, on Monday, as the candidate for his party 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 alongside the first-term senator and cheered as he was nominated by voice vote to be Donald Trump’s running mate.
Weeks earlier, the lawyer and former legal counsel admitted she wasn’t “eager” to completely upend the life she and her husband had built together or to 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 her 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 unfold.
Now, with JD Vance as the vice presidential nominee on Trump’s ticket, the couple embarks on an even bigger journey than the 2022 Senate campaign in Ohio.
Trump’s selection of the senator, who is almost 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 advanced age of candidates from both major parties.
However, the senator, who has been in office since January 2023, will likely face questions about both his lack of political experience and his transition from Trump critic in 2016 to heir to the MAGA movement. If his 2022 Senate campaign is any indication, Usha Vance could play a low-key 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,” JD 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 two 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 at 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 started as an attorney at the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson, with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. She continued working at the firm between advisory stints, 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 on Monday that she had resigned.
“Usha has informed us that she has decided to leave the firm,” the company said in a statement. “Usha was an excellent lawyer and colleague, and we thank her for her years of work and wish her the best in her future career.”
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