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He was arrested on the same day that the House committee investigating the attack was set to open a landmark series of public hearings.

One of Mr. Kelley’s Republican rivals in the primary, Kevin Rinke, a businessman, wrote on Twitter: “My hope is that the F.B.I. is acting appropriately, because the timing here raises serious questions.”

Another Republican opponent, Garrett Soldano, a chiropractor, used the arrest to attack the F.B.I., writing on Twitter that it had become “an arm of the Democrat Party.”

Mr. Kelley’s arrest is the latest disruption in the Republican primary for governor, which is set for Aug. 2. Two of the leading candidates in the race — James Craig, a former Detroit police chief, and Perry Johnson, a wealthy businessman — were dropped from the ballot because of forged signatures on their nominating petitions. Both men recently lost legal challenges to be reinstated on the ballot. Mr. Craig and Mr. Johnson are among five Republican candidates in the race who were declared ineligible.

Mr. Kelley is among the remaining five candidates vying to challenge Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, in the general election this fall. Mr. Kelley has raised a fraction of the amount of money as some of the other candidates in the race.

Mr. Kelley, a real estate broker in a suburb of Grand Rapids, was the lead organizer of an armed protest against pandemic lockdown measures at the Michigan Statehouse in April 2020. In June that year, he called together about 50 militiamen to square off against a few dozen Black Lives Matter protesters over a statue of a Confederate soldier in his town.