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Usha Vance: Meet JD Vance's wife, daughter of Indian immigrants

Indian media have hailed her as the latest among several Americans with roots in India rising to fame

Published: Tue 21 Jan 2025, 12:54 PM

Updated: Tue 21 Jan 2025, 12:59 PM

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Photo: AFP

Photo: AFP

At the US presidential inauguration ceremony on Monday, familiar faces like President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump graced the scene once more. However, Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, made their debut, bringing fresh perspectives to the stage.

As she stood beside her husband when he swore in, Usha, in particular, has caught the attention. So who is Usha Vance, the new US second lady?

Indian roots

The parents of Usha Vance moved to the US in the late 1970s and now teach engineering and molecular biology in San Diego.

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While Usha Vance studied at Yale and Cambridge, her father and grandfather both taught or studied at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), India's premier engineering college. Her younger sister is a mechanical engineer with a semiconductor company in San Diego and an aunt a medical professional in the southern Indian city of Chennai.

The family is originally from a village called Vadduru in Andhra Pradesh state but moved to Chennai when Usha Vance's paternal grandfather, Ramasastry Chilukuri, went to teach at the IIT there around the time it was set up in 1959, members of the family said. The IIT now runs a student award in the memory of Ramasastry, who used to teach physics.

Indian media have hailed her as the latest among several Americans with roots in India rising to fame, including U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and former Republican presidential hopefuls Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, who was J.D. and Usha Vance's classmate at Yale Law.

Legal career

Below is a look at Usha Vance's legal career, which followed an arc from Yale to a Supreme Court clerkship and private practice at one of the country’s most prominent corporate firms.

Vance and her husband attended Yale Law School together, graduating in 2013. She served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal and managing editor of the Yale Journal of Law & Technology and participated in classes offering free legal advice on Supreme Court and media freedom issues.

Usha Vance was a law clerk to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts during the 2017-2018 term, holding one of four coveted slots in his chambers. Law clerks help research cases and write drafts of decisions.

Roberts during that term authored a 5-4 ruling upholding Trump's travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries. In another ruling, Roberts was in the 7-2 majority that backed a Christian baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.

In 2014, she clerked on the influential D.C. Circuit for Brett Kavanaugh, who was nominated by Trump and confirmed to the Supreme Court in 2018.

Corporate litigator

At the 200-lawyer Munger firm, Vance, an associate, focused on civil litigation and appeals, according to an online biography that is now removed from the firm’s website.

The firm, whose founders include the late Charlie Munger, has counted Berkshire Hathaway, Bank of America, and PG&E among its clients.

Vance’s own clients there included a division of the Walt Disney Company and the Regents of the University of California, court records show.

A Munger spokesman said Vance had been an "excellent lawyer and colleague." Douglas Emhoff, husband of former Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, left his job at law firm DLA Piper days after the 2020 election.

In July, Usha said in a statement that she is resigning from her law firm, Munger, Tolles & Olson, to support her family.

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