By Samantha Kamman, Christian Post Reporter Wednesday, July 17, 2024

Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, and his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, look on as he is nominated for the office of vice president on the first day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 15, 2024, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Delegates, politicians, and the Republican faithful are in Milwaukee for the annual convention, concluding with former President Donald Trump accepting his party’s presidential nomination. The RNC takes place from July 15-18. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Image

Following former President Donald Trump’s selection of Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate, the Republican lawmaker’s wife has received renewed attention now that her husband, if elected, would become the second in command. 

Usha Chilukuri Vance and her husband have been married since 2014. She is an accomplished attorney and the daughter of Indian immigrants. 

In a Monday announcement posted to Truth Social, Trump revealed that he chose Usha’s husband as his vice president after “lengthy deliberation.” Trump highlighted Vance’s military service and educational background, promising that his running mate “will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond.”

Now that Trump has officially declared Vance his running mate, the Republican lawmaker’s wife has been thrust into the national spotlight alongside him. 

Here are 4 things to know about Usha Chilukuri Vance’s childhood, career and married life:

• 1. An old friend says Usha assumed a ‘leadership role’ as a childBorn in 1986, Usha grew up in the San Diego suburb of Rancho Peñasquitos, and was part of what The New York Times described as a “close-knit” Indian American community. Usha was raised by a mechanical engineer and a biologist, and an old family friend recalled that she assumed a “leadership role” when she was only 5 or 6.“She decided which board games we were going to play and what the rules were going to be. She was never mean or unkind, but she was the boss,” Vikram Rao told the outlet in November 2022.
  In high school, Usha played the flute in her school’s marching band, and The Times noted that she was known to be “competitive.” Lizzie Le, one of Usha’s former classmates, told the Times that she remembered Usha was a “bookworm” in high school.
• 2. Usha has a law degree, clerked for 2 Supreme Court justicesAccording to Usha’s LinkedIn profile, she obtained a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University and a master’s in philosophy from the University of Cambridge. She later received her law degree from Yale Law School and, during her time there, Usha served as executive development editor of the Yale Law Journal and managing editor of the Yale Journal of Law & Technology.As ABC News reported Monday, Usha worked as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and she clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
  Usha began working as an associate at Munger, Tolles & Olson law firm in 2015, according to CNN. The attorney worked for the firm between clerkships, and the cable news channel reported that Usha’s employee biography stated that she handled “complex civil litigation and appeals,” including “higher education, local government, entertainment, and technology, including semiconductors.”The website for Munger, Tolles & Olson has a webpage celebrating diversity and its “LGBTQ Initiative,” which includes hosting LGBT social events to connect attorneys who identify this way with one another. The law firm also highlights its “pro bono work in support of LGBTQ rights,” including filing an amicus brief in support of same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges.On Monday, CNN reported that the law firm announced that Usha had resigned. “Usha has informed us she has decided to leave the firm,” the company said in a statement. “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.”
• 3. J.D. Vance and Usha Chilukuri met at Yale Law SchoolDuring her time at Yale Law School, Usha met J.D. Vance, the future Republican senator of Ohio and now-running mate to GOP presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump. In November 2022, The New York Times reported that J.D. and Usha were in the same classes during their first year of law school. In 2013, the pair were some of the organizers behind a discussion group on the subject of “social decline in white America.”“Usha was like my Yale spirit guide,” Vance wrote about his wife in Hillbilly Elegy. “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 conservative podcast host Megyn Kelly, Vance described himself as the kind of man who “really benefits from having sort of a powerful female voice over his left shoulder saying, ‘Don’t do that, do that.’” The Republican lawmaker told Kelly that the powerful female voice in his life used to be his grandmother, but now it’s Usha. Usha and Vance were married in Kentucky in 2014, and they also held a separate ceremony where they were blessed by a Hindu pandit (priest), according to the Times. Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019, while Usha is Hindu. The couple have three children together.
• 4. PoliticsThe New York Times reported that voter registration records indicate that Usha was registered as a Democrat until at least 2014, and the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson, where she later worked, also describes its culture as “radically progressive.”Usha appears to support her husband’s politics, telling a Newsmax anchor during an August 2022 interview, “The J.D. that I met back when we were in law school is the J.D. that I’m sitting next to right now.”Before former President Donald Trump announced that he had chosen her husband as his running mate, Usha seemed reluctant to enter into the national spotlight that would likely follow if Trump selected Vance.“I don’t know that anyone is ever ready for that kind of scrutiny,” she told Fox News last month. “I think we found the first campaign that he embarked on to be a shock. It was so different from anything we’d ever done before. But it was an adventure.”While the attorney and mother of three stated that she is “not raring to change” anything about her family’s life at the time, Usha added that she is “open” to what might happen.