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Two Soviet-born donors to a pro- Trump fundraising committee who helped Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to investigate Democrat Joe Biden were arrested late Wednesday on criminal charges of violating campaign finance rules and are expected to appear in court on Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter.

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Florida businessmen, have been under investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, and are expected to appear in federal court in Virginia later on Thursday, the people said. Both men were born in former Soviet republics.

Mr. Giuliani, President Trump’s private lawyer, identified the two men in May as his clients. Both men have donated to Republican campaigns including Mr. Trump’s, and in May 2018 gave $325,000 to the primary pro-Trump super PAC, America First Action, through an LLC called Global Energy Producers, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The exact nature of the charges couldn’t immediately be determined.

John Dowd, who headed Mr. Trump’s legal team until spring 2018 and is a lawyer for the two men, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The Campaign Legal Center, a transparency advocacy group, filed a complaint with the FEC in July 2018 calling on the commission to investigate whether Messrs. Parnas and Fruman had violated campaign-finance laws by using an LLC to disguise the source of their donations.

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Since late 2018, Mr. Fruman and Mr. Parnas have introduced Mr. Giuliani to several current and former senior Ukrainian prosecutors to discuss the Biden case.

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Attorney General William Barr discussed the case on Thursday with federal prosecutors in Manhattan, where he was making a preplanned visit. A Justice Department official said Mr. Barr was supportive of their work on the case, on which he was first briefed shortly after being confirmed as attorney general in February. He was aware the pair would be charged and taken into custody last night, the official said.

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Mr. Parnas in July accompanied Mr. Giuliani to a breakfast meeting with Kurt Volker, then the U.S. special representative for Ukraine negotiations. “We had a long conversation about Ukraine,” Mr. Volker wrote in his testimony to House committees last week. During that breakfast, Mr. Giuliani mentioned the investigations he was pursuing into Mr. Biden and 2016 election interference.

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In May 2018, Pete Sessions, at the time a GOP congressman from Texas, sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asking for her removal, saying he had been told Ms. Yovanovitch was displaying a bias against the president in private conversations.

Mr. Sessions told the Journal his letter was in line with a broader concern among members of Congress that the administration wasn’t moving swiftly enough to put new ambassadors in place. He declined to say where his information about the ambassador came from but said he didn’t follow up on his letter and didn’t hear until months later about Mr. Trump’s interest in replacing her.

The indictment references a congressman, identifiable as Mr. Sessions, whose assistance Mr. Parnas sought in “causing the U.S. government to remove or recall the then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine.” The indictment says those efforts were conducted “at least in part, at the request of one or more Ukrainian government officials.” Mr. Sessions didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Messrs. Parnas and Fruman told the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project in July that they told Mr. Sessions last year that Ms. Yovanovitch was “bad-mouthing” the president. They later donated to his campaign.

Mr. Trump moved to oust Ms. Yovanovitch this spring after Mr. Giuliani told him that she was undermining him abroad and hindering efforts to investigate Mr. Biden. House committees are seeking Ms. Yovanovitch’s testimony.

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A fourth defendant who allegedly conspired with associates of President Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to illegally funnel foreign money into Republican campaigns, has turned himself in to authorities.

David Correia, 44, a Florida resident, surrendered at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport after returning from the Middle East. He appeared briefly in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Wednesday and was released on $250,000 bond.

Correia's arrest comes a week after Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, who allegedly helped Giuliani in his efforts to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in Ukraine, were arrested at Dulles International Airport outside Washington as they tried to board a plane to Frankfurt, Germany, on one-way tickets.

Another man, Andrey Kukushkin, a Ukrainian-born California businessman, was arrested last week in San Francisco. Parnas was also born in Ukraine and Fruman in Belarus.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that Giuliani is a focus of the investigation.

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Earlier this week, a grand jury issued a subpoena for former Texas Republican Rep. Pete Sessions, who is thought to be the "congressman-1" listed in the indictment. According to the indictment, Fruman and Parnas met with "congressman-1" during the 2018 campaign and pledged to raise $20,000 for him, possibly in exchange for "assistance" in removing then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.