J.D. Vance, U.S. Senator

J.D. Vance is an American attorney, author, and retired U.S. Marine best known for writing the 2016 bestseller Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. He is currently ‎principal at Mithril Capital Management LLC of San Francisco and serves as a conservative commentator for CNN.

Vance was born in Middletown, Ohio and primarily raised there, with regular trips to his maternal grandparents' childhood home of Jackson, Kentucky. He identifies as a Scots-Irish hillbilly due to his heritage and the influence of his grandparents' culture. In Hillbilly Elegy, he writes about his family dysfunction, including his mother's opioid addiction, financial difficulty, and family violence, and attributes these characteristics to what he sees as learned helplessness amongst Appalachian families.

Name

J.D. Vance was born James Donald Bowman. His middle name, Donald, was chosen for his father, Donald Bowman. After his parents divorced, his mother married Robert Hamel, known as "Bob," who became his legal father. J.D.'s name was then changed to James David Hamel, thereby keeping the "D" initial and preserving "J.D.," his universal nickname. J. D. and his wife, Usha, legally adopted his mother's birth surname, Vance, when they married.