Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, who ran the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for eight years under President Obama, was arrested in Brooklyn on Friday morning and charged with groping a woman in his apartment in October 2017, the police said.

A 55-year-old woman came forward to the police in July and said that Dr. Frieden squeezed her buttocks against her will nine months earlier, on Oct. 20, the police said. She told investigators the incident happened as she was leaving a gathering at Dr. Frieden’s residence on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights.

At 10 a.m. on Friday, Dr. Frieden surrendered to the police at the 77th Precinct in Crown Heights.

He was arraigned Friday afternoon before Justice Michael Yavinsky in Kings County Criminal Court on charges of forcible touching, third-degree sexual abuse and harassment. The judge released Dr. Frieden without bail, ordering him to surrender his passport and to have no contact with the victim. Neither he, nor his lawyer, Laura A. Brevetti, commented as they left the courthouse.

The woman who said she had been groped, an artist in New York City, had been a vocal #MeToo activist before the Oct. 20 incident, creating artwork related to the movement. In April, she wrote an article in an online publication describing her transition from activist to victim, and related the events of that night without naming her abuser.