Usha Vance

Usha Chilukuri Vance (née Chilukuri; born January 6, 1986) is an American lawyer. She is the wife of JD Vance, Ohio's junior United States Senator^[2] and Donald Trump's running mate in the 2024 presidential election. If JD Vance is elected Vice President, Usha Vance would become the first woman of Indian descent to serve as Second Lady of the United States.^[3]

After graduating from Yale Law School, Vance was a law clerk for multiple federal judges, including Chief Justice John Roberts, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, and Judge Amul Thapar.^[4]

Usha Chilukuri's parents hail from the West Godavari and Krishna districts of Andhra Pradesh, India, and migrated to the U.S. in the 1980s.^[5][6] Usha's paternal ancestry can be traced to Chilukuri Buchipapayya Sastri (c. 18th century), who lived in Saipuram in Vuyyuru Mandal of Krishna district, Andhra Pradesh.^[7][5][8] Later, one branch of the family migrated to Vadluru near Tanuku in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh.^[9] Usha's mother, Lakshmi, hails from Pamarru in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh.^[5][7]

Usha's paternal grandfather, Chilukuri Rama Sastri, taught physics at IIT Madras. The institute now runs a student award in his memory.^[10] Her grand-aunt, Chilukuri Santhamma, living in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, is considered India's oldest active professor at 96 years age as of 2024.^[10] Her aunt (father's sister) lives in Chennai.^[7]

Usha Chilukuri was born in San Diego, California, to Telugu Indian Hindu immigrants.^[10] Her father is a mechanical engineer from IIT Madras and a lecturer at San Diego State University^[11], while her mother is a molecular biologist and provost at the University of California, San Diego.^[12] She was raised in San Diego's upper-middle-class Rancho Peñasquitos suburb.^[13] In 2003 she graduated from Mt. Carmel High School, where she performed in the marching band.^[14][15] She has one sister, Shreya.^[16] Childhood friends described her as a "leader" and a "bookworm."^[17] She attended Yale University, graduating summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in history, with membership in Phi Beta Kappa. She then attended Clare College, Cambridge, in England, as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, receiving a Master of Philosophy in early modern history in 2010.^[18]

In 2013, Vance obtained her Juris Doctor from Yale Law School, where she was the Executive Development Editor of the Yale Law Journal and Managing Editor of the Yale Journal of Law & Technology.^[19][20][21] During her time at Yale, she also taught American history as a Yale-China Teaching Fellow at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China.^[20]

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (July 2024)

In 2014–15 Vance served as a law clerk for then–District of Columbia Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh and in 2017–18 for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.^[22] She was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar in May 2019 and worked for the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, handling civil litigation and appeals in cases involving higher education, local government, entertainment and technology, until July 2024.^[23] Among her clients were the Regents of the University of California and a division of The Walt Disney Company.^[24]

She has served on the board of the Gates Cambridge Alumni Association and as secretary of the board of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.^[25]

In July 2024, Vance delivered the introductory address for her husband at the 2024 Republican National Convention, which was well-received.^[26][27]

While at Yale Law School, Chilukuri met her future husband, JD Vance, a relationship encouraged by their professor Amy Chua.^[28] Chua has called their relationship "extremely unlikely, almost opposites of personality".^[29] Vance described Chilukuri as his "Yale spirit guide" because she was a critical source of support and encouragement in his academic and professional life.^[29] In 2013, Chilukuri and Vance collaborated to organize a discussion group at Yale focused on "social decline in white America".^[2]

Chilukuri and Vance married in 2014 in Kentucky, in an interfaith marriage ceremony,^[30][17] which included Bible reading by her husband's friend Jamil Jivani,^[31] while the couple was also blessed by a Hindu pandit.^[2] They have three children.^[32][33] She is a practicing Hindu, and her husband is a Christian^[30][34] who was raised Evangelical but converted to Catholicism in 2019.^[35]

According to public records, in 2014 Chilukuri voted in Democratic primaries, but in 2022, she voted in the Republican primary, in which her husband was a candidate.^[17][29] She clerked for conservative judges, such as Roberts and Kavanaugh, but has also practiced at a California law firm with a progressive work culture.^[36] According to The New York Times, her political views seem to have changed over the years, as in 2021, she made a political contribution to the U.S. Senate campaign of a national conservative, Blake Masters.^[2]

Reading has been a passion for Chilukuri. The "read" books on her Goodreads account include novels by Zadie Smith, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Vladimir Nabokov, as well as nonfiction by Nina Burleigh and Nicholas Kristof. In 2016, she gave her husband's book, Hillbilly Elegy, a 5-star rating.^[2]

In Hillbilly Elegy (2020), a film about the life of her husband, she was portrayed by actress Freida Pinto.