Who Is Usha Vance, the Wife of J.D. Vance?

If you were to build a member of the American elite from scratch, she might look something like Usha Vance.

The wife of Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, Donald J. Trump’s newly announced running mate, certainly has the credentials. A corporate litigator at a prestigious San Francisco law firm, Ms. Vance has clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was an appeals court judge, and earned degrees from Yale and Cambridge.

It’s a conspicuous résumé for a woman whose husband gave a speech in 2021 titled “The Universities are the Enemy,” and rarely missed a chance to bash the establishment as he campaigned for the Senate in 2022, as The New York Times previously reported.

But Ms. Vance is something of a political cipher.

The daughter of Indian immigrants, Usha Chilukuri grew up in a San Diego suburb. Friends from her childhood and adolescence described her as a “leader” and a “bookworm.” Brainy, ambitious and pragmatic, she moved from an extracurricular-studded four years at Yale to a Gates Fellowship at Cambridge, where she moved in mostly liberal and left-wing circles. As of 2014, she was a registered Democrat.

She and Mr. Vance met at Yale Law School, and the pair were married in Kentucky in 2014, and blessed by a Hindu pundit in a separate ceremony.