James David Vance, born James Donald Bowman, is an American politician, author and member of the Republican Party. He has served as the 50th vice-president of the United States since 2025 and previously represented Ohio in the U.S. Senate from 2023 to 2025. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps as a military journalist.

Vance rose to national prominence with his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, about his family and the social and economic challenges of his hometown, Middletown, Ohio. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 2019.

In response to a plan to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan, convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Vance said he did not know whether the livestream would happen and that he would not watch it if it did. He also said the controversy should not obscure Hasan’s killing of innocent people.