Ohio Sen. JD Vance, former President Donald Trump's running mate in the 2024 presidential election, is a Yale-educated lawyer who is married to a fellow Yale Law School grad, Usha Chilukuri Vance.
On July 15 at the Republican National Convention, the former president announced that he'd selected Vance, formerly a staunch critic of his and currently the junior United States senator from Ohio, as his running mate.
The 39-year-old politician gained fame for his 2016 memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy." The book was adapted into a 2020 Netflix drama and featured the young politician's blossoming relationship with Chilukuri, played by actor Freida Pinto in the film.
Usha and JD Vance married in 2014 and have three children.
Read on for what we know about the wife of Trump's running mate for the 2024 election.
According to The New York Times, Usha Vance, 38, was born to parents who immigrated from India, and she was raised in a suburb of San Diego, California.
In a 2017 interview with NBC News, Usha Vance reflected on having met JD Vance while the two were students at Yale Law School. The two had "all their classes together," she said.
"We were friends, and I liked that he was very diligent," she said. "He would show up at 9 a.m. appointments that I would set up for us to start working on the brief together."
During the interview, JD described his wife as quick to be protective.
"The thing that I remember most about Usha is just how completely forward and comfortable with herself she was," Vance recalled of his wife during their time as law students. "(She was) so defensive about the things that she really cared about."
"You know, our dog got in trouble at daycare," he remembered. "This is our dog at daycare, and Usher's response was, 'He's too good for that daycare.'"
According to The New York Times, the two married were married in Kentucky, where guests sat on wooden benches set in the grass. They were also blessed by a Hindu pundit in a separate ceremony, The Times reported.
The couple has three young children: Sons Ewan and Vivek, and a daughter named Mirabel.
At the time of their 2017 interview with NBC News, the couple was expecting their first child. Usha Vance described her husband as "gentle" and "kind."
“He’s actually a very gentle person,” she said at the time. “I think that comes across in the way he tells a story. We have two dogs and the way that he treats them — they’re like his babies, and so I’ve seen him kind of with vulnerable creatures for many years now.”
She was previously employed as a lawyerUsha Vance earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and then attended Cambridge University for a master's degree before returning to the U.S. to attend law school at Yale.
Her LinkedIn page shows she worked as an associate attorney at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP for almost six years.
Following the announcement of JD Vance as the vice presidential pick, Usha Vance resigned from her job.
“Usha has informed us she has decided to leave the firm. 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," communications manager Sara Rosenblit said in an email to TODAY.com.
Her bio on her former firm's website, which has since been taken down, described her as a litigator for its San Francisco and Washington, D.C. offices, whose practice focuses on "complex civil litigation and appeals" in sectors including "higher education, local government, entertainment, and technology."
Her law firm's website says she clerked for Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court, and she also clerked for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was an appeals court judge in Washington, D.C.
CORRECTION (7/15 at 4:58 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misspelled the first name of actor Freida Pinto.
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
