CHICAGO — Fellow inmates battered Jason Van Dyke, the white former Chicago police officer convicted of murdering a black teenager, shortly after his arrival at a federal prison in Connecticut this month, Mr. Van Dyke’s lawyers and his wife said.

Mr. Van Dyke, who was sentenced in January to nearly seven years in prison in the 2014 shooting death of Laquan McDonald, was transferred last week from an Illinois prison to the federal penitentiary in Danbury, Conn. Mr. Van Dyke’s lawyers said he suffered injuries to his face and was bruised, but was expected to recover.

“We’re just asking that Jason Van Dyke be allowed to serve his time,” said Daniel Herbert, one of Mr. Van Dyke’s lawyers, at a news conference on Thursday. “He’s a tough man. He’ll go in there and serve his sentence and keep his mouth shut. But he needs to be protected, because he can’t protect himself in there.”

Federal prison officials confirmed that there was “an assault resulting in minor injuries” on Feb. 7, but they did not answer questions about his lawyers’ account of the attack or the reasons for Mr. Van Dyke’s transfer to the Connecticut prison. Illinois prison officials confirmed that Mr. Van Dyke, who was convicted in state court, had been transferred out of state custody, but they declined to provide any other details.