Who is Usha Vance? What to know about JD Vance’s wife

On By Littum

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President-elect Donald Trump and his family won’t be the only ones in the spotlight after he and Vice President JD Vance are sworn in on Monday. Usha Vance, soon-to-be second lady, will also be along for the ride.

Before US businessman and former President Trump takes his oath of office at noon ET on Inauguration Day, Vance will step onto the inaugural platform and do the same, according to Joint Congress Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies.

Usha Vance and the couple’s three children will be among those in attendance at the swearing-in ceremony in Washington, DC

Although the title of second lady is more of a ceremonial role, it’s likely that Usha Vance will continue to offer her husband unwavering support as he steps into this new role.

In JD Vance’s 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” the former Ohio senator described his wife as his “spirit guide,” bailing him out at a fancy dinner by secretly advising him on the proper cutlery to use and reminding him that “every perceived slight is not cause for blood feud.”

Who is Usha Vance? Here’s what you need to know about JD Vance’s wife and former legal counsel as the family joins Trump in the White House.

See Usha Vance through the years: Lawyer, mother, second lady

Who is Usha Vance?

Usha Chilukuri, 38, was born and raised in San Diego to Hindu Indian immigrants. Both parents are educators, and her father is an engineer and teaches at San Diego State University, while her mother Lakshmi Chilukuri is provost of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of California, San Diego.

Her younger sister is a mechanical engineer at a San Diego-based semiconductor company, according to Reuters, and her aunt is a doctor in the eastern Indian city of Chennai.

Before Usha Vance hit the campaign trail with her husband, she worked at Munger, Tolles & Olson, a law firm that specializes in litigation, corporate liability, professional liability, employment, financial restructuring, tax and executive compensation. She left the company when JD Vance secured the nomination for vice president.

Usha Vance’s husband JD

Usha met JD while they were both students at Yale Law School, where she was one of the top students.

They were assigned as partners for their first major writing assignment: “She seemed like a kind of genetic anomaly, a combination of every positive quality a human should have: bright, hardworking, tall and beautiful,” JD Vance wrote in his memoir.

Before attending law school, Usha Vance received an undergraduate degree from Yale University and later completed a Master of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge after receiving the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, TIME reported.

A registered Democrat until 2014, Usha Vance clerked for conservative justices, including U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh when he was an appeals court judge after she graduated from law school in 2013.

The couple were married a year later.

Children of Usha and JD Vance

Usha and JD share three children: Ewan Blaine, 7, Vivek, 4, and Mirabel Rose, 3.

  • Ewan Blaine was born in June 2017.
  • Vivek was born in February 2020.
  • Mirabel Rose was born in December 2021.

Usha Vance’s Religion

In one June 2024 interview with Fox News, Usha Vance told that she grew up in a religious household, but that she was not raised Christian and is not a Christian.

“My parents are Hindu, and that was one of the things that made them such good parents, which makes them really, really good people,” she told Fox News. “And then I think I’ve seen it, the power of it in my own life.”

Will Usha Vance and her family join Trump in the White House?

The Vance family will, by tradition, move from their home in Cincinnati’s East Walnut Hills neighborhood to the grounds of the United States Naval Observatory after the dedication festivities conclude.

Vice Presidents and their families have lived in a nineteenth-century White House located at Number One Observatory Circle, a few miles from the White House, since 1977. It has since been home to the families of Vice Presidents Bush, Quayle, Gore, Cheney, Biden and Pence according The White House.

Contributors: Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, USA TODAY; Cheryl McCloud, USA Today Network-Florida; Haley BeMiller and Chad Murphy; Cincinnati asks