JD Vance's wife Usha has SCOTUS ties going back to when she clerked for both John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
- Trump has picked JD Vance as his running mate.
- JD Vance's wife, Usha Vance, was a corporate lawyer, but she quit her job on Monday.
- She does have SCOTUS links, having clerked for Supreme Court judges John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh.
All eyes were on Sen. JD Vance of Ohio when former President Donald Trump picked him as running mate for the 2024 race.
But his wife, lawyer Usha Chilukuri Vance, is also accomplished in her own right — and has links to the US Supreme Court.
Born to Indian immigrant parents and raised in the San Diego suburbs, Usha Vance went to Yale Law School with the Ohio senator.
She worked as a corporate litigator for Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, a law firm with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, DC.
Usha Vance told news outlet SFGate on Monday that she was resigning from her role at the firm.
"In light of today's news, I have resigned from my position at Munger, Tolles & Olson to focus on caring for our family," she told SFGate.
Ties to John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh
The potential future second lady has ties to the SCOTUS, having clerked for Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh between 2014 and 2015 and Chief Justice John Roberts between 2017 and 2018.
The two judges are both staunch conservatives.
Trump nominated the controversial Kavanaugh to the SCOTUS during his presidential term, and the judge took his seat in October 2018.
Roberts and Kavanaugh were also part of the court majority that handed Trump a win in his immunity case. A lower court will now decide how the SCOTUS ruling will affect special counsel Jack Smith's prosecution of Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
"We conclude that under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power requires that a former President have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office," Roberts wrote in the July decision on behalf of the majority.
"At least with respect to the President's exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute."
JD Vance's turn to Trump
Sen. Vance, 39, was once a Trump critic. According to leaked text messages from 2016, he once told his college roommate that he feared Trump might become "America's Hitler."
Now Sen. Vance — also the author of the bestseller memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy" — has made it clear that if elected vice president, he intends to be a Trump loyalist.
In an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity on Monday night, he said: "I was certainly skeptical of Donald Trump in 2016, but President Trump was a great president, and he changed my mind."
For his part, Trump seems happy with his choice.
"As Vice President, J.D. will continue to fight for our Constitution, stand with our Troops, and will do everything he can to help me MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN," Trump said when announcing his pick on Truth Social on Monday.
Usha Vance and the Vance campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.