WASHINGTON — Robert S. Mueller III, the former special counsel, has agreed to testify in public before Congress next month about his investigation into Russia’s election interference and possible obstruction of justice by President Trump, House Democrats announced on Tuesday night.

Coming nearly three months after the release of Mr. Mueller’s report, two back-to-back hearings on July 17 before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees promise to be among the most closely watched spectacles of Mr. Trump’s presidency. The hearings could potentially reshape the political landscape around his re-election campaign and prompt a possible impeachment inquiry by the Democrat-controlled House.

Mr. Mueller, a strait-laced former F.B.I. director who has spoken publicly only once about his work as special counsel, had resisted taking the witness stand. He knows he is certain to face questions from both sides of a pitched political fight. Many Democrats are eager to employ him to build a case against Mr. Trump, and Republicans are just as eager to vindicate the president. His 448-page written report, Mr. Mueller asserted, should speak for itself.

In the end, though, the two committees issued subpoenas compelling Mr. Mueller to speak, and he accepted.

The chairmen of the panels, Representatives Jerrold Nadler of New York and Adam B. Schiff of California, wrote in a letter to Mr. Mueller on Tuesday that they understood that he had reservations about appearing on Capitol Hill, but they were insistent he do so, anyway.

“The American public deserves to hear directly from you about your investigation and conclusions,” the chairmen wrote. “We will work with you to address legitimate concerns about preserving the integrity of your work, but we expect that you will appear before our committees as scheduled.”

The White House declined to comment on Tuesday night. However, Mr. Trump posted a familiar two-word refrain on Twitter amid news of the testimony: “Presidential Harassment!”

The president and his attorney general, William P. Barr, have said that they have no issue with Mr. Mueller testifying, but they could theoretically try to block him from appearing, as they have other former government officials.

The stakes could scarcely be higher for Mr. Trump, who is facing re-election next year, or for Congress, which is battling to weaken him. The executive and legislative branches have been locked in an ever escalating dispute over access to documents and witnesses related to Mr. Mueller’s work, with the White House refusing to honor congressional subpoenas and court battles looming. That intransigence has prompted growing calls for an impeachment inquiry on Capitol Hill, but has also slowly lost the attention of the wider public.

The hearings will most likely be aired live and in full on network and cable television. With other potential witnesses off limits for now, Mr. Mueller possesses perhaps the singular authority to shift the dynamic in Washington and change the minds of Americans across the country who long since cast their lot with Mr. Trump or his critics.

“Americans have demanded to hear directly from the special counsel so they can understand what he and his team examined, uncovered, and determined about Russia’s attack on our democracy, the Trump campaign’s acceptance and use of that help, and President Trump and his associates’ obstruction of the investigation into that attack,” Mr. Nadler and Mr. Schiff said in a joint statement.

The question is what Mr. Mueller will be willing to say.

From the time he took over the F.B.I.’s investigation of Russia’s election meddling and possible ties to the Trump campaign in May 2017, Mr. Mueller, 74, has been one of the most vexing figures in American public life. He conducted his work in absolute private, despite incessant attacks by Mr. Trump in public and from within the White House, and ultimately issued a lengthy report that raised as many questions as it answered.

In the report, Mr. Mueller detailed Russia’s disinformation and hacking campaigns to sow chaos in the American political system, harm Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and eventually bolst Mr. Trump. Though he detailed more than 100 contacts between Trump associates and various Russian figures and painted a picture of a campaign that welcomed the foreign assistance, the special counsel ultimately concluded that there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone with conspiring with the Russians to undermine the 2016 election.

Mr. Mueller’s team also extensively investigated whether Mr. Trump’s attempts to thwart its work amounted to obstruction of justice. The special counsel’s report documented 10 such episodes — including orders by Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Mueller, to constrain his investigation and to alter records about what he had done.

Ultimately, the members of Mr. Mueller’s team concluded that because Justice Department policy prohibits indicting a sitting president, they could not determine whether Mr. Trump’s actions had been criminal. But they also clearly stated that they could not exonerate the president of wrongdoing, either, and that the Constitution provides another means of adjudicating possible presidential wrongdoing: Congress.

“If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” Mr. Mueller said during his lone public appearance in late May.

House Democrats have seized on those comments as a de facto referral to Congress to act, but they want to hear more from Mr. Mueller about why he made such an unusual prosecutorial decision around obstruction of justice and if he believes he had enough evidence to charge Mr. Trump if he was not president.

They will probably be disappointed. In his short public statement in May, Mr. Mueller was adamant that any testimony before Congress “would not go beyond our report.”

“It contains our findings and analysis and the reasons for the decisions we made,” Mr. Mueller said. “We chose those words carefully, and the work speaks for itself. And the report is my testimony. I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before Congress.”

Even so, Democrats believe there could be high value in the testimony to capture the public’s attention in a way that a dense prosecutor’s report could not.

Mr. Mueller will appear before the Judiciary Committee first on July 17 — at 9 a.m., according to a copy of the subpoena issued by Mr. Nadler. The Intelligence Committee session is likely to occur immediately afterward in the same hearing room.

Mr. Schiff told reporters shortly after the announcement that he expected his committee to meet privately with members of Mr. Mueller’s staff after his testimony to answer additional questions about classified portions of his report or details that implicate ongoing Justice Department cases. As special counsel, Mr. Mueller employed a large team of prosecutors and F.B.I. agents whose detailed knowledge of the case could be as valuable to House investigators as Mr. Mueller’s public statements.

The committee leaders have been under intense pressure from Democratic activists and their own rank-and-file members alike to secure an appearance by Mr. Mueller. Mr. Nadler and Mr. Schiff initially invited the special counsel to testify voluntarily in April, but discussions proved thorny and protracted. Mr. Mueller and his team of prosecutors wanted to avoid a public spectacle, asked to limit his remarks to closed sessions with lawmakers and insisted that their report would best speak for itself.

As of now, it does not appear that Mr. Mueller will participate in a hearing before the Republican-controlled Senate, where lawmakers in the majority were less insistent he appear.

Republicans in the House, who continue to stress that Mr. Mueller did not recommend charging Mr. Trump with either conspiracy to aid the Russians or obstruction of justice, welcomed the news. They are likely to press Mr. Mueller not just on those bottom-line conclusions but also on the composition of his team — which Mr. Trump has dismissed as a group of “angry Democrats”— and what they argue are possible irregularities and government abuses around the origins of the F.B.I. Russia investigation that Mr. Mueller inherited.

“Thank God,” Representative Doug Collins of Georgia, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said in a brief interview on Tuesday night. “We’ve been asking for this for awhile.”

Emily Cochrane and Annie Karni contributed reporting.

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