Exploring J.D. Vance's Wife: Usha Vance, Former SCOTUS Clerk and Reluctant Political Spouse | Vanity Fair

On Monday, when Donald Trump announced freshman Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance as his pick for vice president Monday, J.D.'s life wasn't the only one that changed immediately. His wife, Usha Vance, was described until Monday on her law firm’s website as “a skilled litigator specializing in complex civil litigation and appeals in higher education, local government, and technology sectors.” Now? “Page not found.”

Usha Vance has a new job now: Potential Second Lady of the United States. She's gone full-time supporting her husband, who published Hillbilly Elegy in 2016, as he accepts the invite to join convicted felon/twice-impeached former president/Republican party presidential nominee Trump on the Republican ticket.

If a late June interview with Fox & Friends is anything to go by, Usha is somewhat less than thrilled by the prospect of a possible future career as SLOTUS. Interviewed alongside her husband, Usha kept things brief and euphemistic: “It was an adventure,” she said of J.D.’s successful 2022 run for the Senate.

As to whether she’s ready for a vice presidential upgrade and move to the Naval Observatory? “I guess the way that I’d put it is I’m not raring to change anything about our lives right now,” she said. “But I really believe in J.D. and I really love him, so we’ll just see what happens with our lives. We’re open.”

She declined to name any causes she’d support as Second Lady (“I think we might be getting a little ahead of ourselves there”) and mentioned zero personal passions in the interview apart from her husband and family. “We’re really just focused on right now being a family and supporting J.D. in his current role,” she said.

Then Usha Chilukuri, she met Vance while they were both at Yale Law School, and married him in 2014, the year after they graduated. They now have three children, Ewan, 7, Vivek, 4, and Mirabel, 2.

Usha, who is Indian-American, was raised near San Diego. She was raised Hindu at home, and the couple’s Kentucky wedding was interfaith. According to the New York Times, she was registered as a Democrat until at least 2014. Other personal tidbits are as scant as they are general: The Times discovered that she played the flute in high school. A classmate shared that she was “a bookworm.”

Vance has undergone a public image metamorphosis in the last handful of years, from a “Never Trump” guy who once called his new running mate “America's Hitler” to a “Running With Trump” guy. In a 2022 interview with Newsmax ahead of her husband’s senatorial campaign, Usha delivered a line that would serve as a bumper for his shifting takes: “The J.D. that I met back in law school is the same as the J.D. that I’m sitting next to right now,” she said. “He cares about the same people that he’s cared about, he has the same values and priorities.”

What those values and priorities are, she didn’t specify.

In his bestselling memoir, he wrote that Usha has been a catalyst for growth for him, and that 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.”

In a 2020 interview with Megyn Kelly, he said that Usha had taken over the role in his life that his grandmother, Hillbilly’s “Mamaw,” previously held.

“I’m one of those guys who really benefits from having sort of a powerful female voice over his left shoulder saying, ‘Don’t do that, do that.’”

Usha studied history as an undergrad at Yale, then copyright law at the University of Cambridge, before enrolling at Yale Law School. She clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. as well as a pre-Supreme Court Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Usha, described in Hillbilly Elegy as his “Yale spirit guide,” resigned her position from Munger, Tolles & Olson, the law firm announced Monday. In a statement, the firm (characterized in a 2019 The American Lawyer article as a “cool, woke” law practice) said they “wish her the best in her future career.”

The same article called Usha’s now-former workplace “radically progressive” thanks to its family-friendly benefits and gender and racial diversity in hiring and promotion. In June 2024, Vance introduced the “Dismantle DEI Act,” which would cut funding for diversity initiatives and education. “The DEI agenda is a destructive ideology that breeds hatred and racial division,” he said.

In a statement to SFGate Monday, Usha didn’t elaborate on her feelings about what was next for her, other than focusing on being a parent.