A freshman at George Mason University in Virginia is accused of plotting an attack at the Israeli consulate general in New York. He faces a charge of distributing information relating to weapons of mass destruction, according to federal court documents.

The student, Abdullah Ezzeldin Taha Mohamed Hassan, a citizen of Egypt, interacted with an F.B.I. informant he met online. After the informant told Mr. Hassan that it may be God’s will for the informant to “act here,” Mr. Hassan, 18, encouraged the informant to attack government buildings and sent a link to a video with bomb-making instructions, according to an affidavit filed on Monday by an F.B.I. agent.

When the informant, posing as an eager co-conspirator, told Mr. Hassan he was in New York, the student replied that the city was a “goldmine of targets” and that the best choice for an attack would be a building representing the “Yahud” — the Arabic word for Jews. The next day, Mr. Hassan sent the informant the address of the Israeli consulate general in the city.

“Two options: lay havoc on them with an assault rifle or detonate a TATP vest in the midst of them,” Mr. Hassan wrote, referring to an explosive compound.

He was arrested on Tuesday in Falls Church, Va., according to court documents. The charge he faces carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

George Mason, a public university in Fairfax, a suburb of Washington, enrolls about 40,000 students. It’s the largest public research university in Virginia, and also claims to be the state’s most diverse. The law school, which was renamed after Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016, has become a hub of conservative legal scholarship and has employed several conservative sitting Supreme Court justices as instructors.