On July 7, 2025, Trump nominee Judge Stephen Vaden was sworn in as the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), serving under U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins. He was confirmed for the position by the Senate in June in a vote of 48-45.

Judge Vaden previously served as General Counsel to USDA during President Trump’s first term. In 2020, President Trump appointed Judge Vaden to serve on the U.S. Court of International Trade.

As head of the Office of General Counsel to USDA, the department won two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, relocated and reorganized USDA agencies, engaged in regulatory reform including the development of new regulations for the legal sale of hemp and the labeling of bioengineered products, and implemented the 2018 Farm Bill.

Judge Vaden holds a B.A. from Vanderbilt University and a J.D. from Yale Law School. Following law school, he completed two clerkships in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee. Judge Vaden has practiced law at the Washington, D.C. firms of Patton Boggs and Jones Day, focusing on litigation, particularly at the appellate level, as well as election law and administrative law. He is a native of Union City, Tennessee.