The White House and the State Department had urged Russia to release Robert Gilman, 32, so he can receive medical treatment in the United States.
Gilman was being held in a prison in Voronezh, about 550km south of Moscow.
"We appreciate this decision, and the fact that Russia asked for no one in return - No exchange took place," US President Donald Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
The exact circumstances of Gilman's health are unclear.
But Eric Lebson, chief strategy officer of Global Reach, an advocacy group representing Gilman's family, told Reuters last week that Gilman was moved in late June from the prison hospital to the psychiatric ward of a civilian emergency hospital in a catatonic-like state assessed as a "dissociative stupor".
The US officials said Gilman on Tuesday was on a State Department plane carrying him from Russia to Washington Dulles Airport.
A US official who spoke to Gilman said he was walking and talking.
"All things considered he seems to be in good shape," the official said.
Gilman will be evaluated on the flight by four doctors, said the US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
His mother, Nina, was also on board.
The US officials said Gilman, upon arrival at Dulles, will be greeted by US envoy Steve Witkoff and deputy national security adviser Sebastian Gorka, both of whom had sought Gilman's release along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, US special envoy for hostage response Adam Boehler and other officials.
After that, Gilman is likely to be flown to a rehabilitation centre in San Antonio, Texas, for medical treatment, the officials said.
Gilman, who served in the US Marines from August 2019 until August 2020, was travelling by train when he was arrested in January 2022 in Voronezh, Lebson said.
He was detained for allegedly kicking a police officer while drunk, according to Russian state media.
However, his father Vladimir Gilman - who emigrated to the US state of Massachusetts from Russia - wrote in an October 2024 Boston Globe op-ed that the charges were false.
His son, he said, had fallen ill when the incident occurred and accidentally kicked the officer.
The officer was uninjured, dropped the charges, and did not present evidence at Gilman's trial, he wrote.
Robert Gilman was sentenced to four and a half years in jail.
He was one of at least 10 US citizens known to be imprisoned in Russia.
The US officials said a Russian senior official, Yuri Ushakov, informed Trump's aides last week that Putin had agreed to sign a decree pardoning Gilman for humanitarian purposes, given Putin's friendship with the president.
The release resulted from intense negotiations over the weekend by US and Russian officials.
The US did not exchange any Russian prisoners in order to gain Gilman's release, the officials said.
"It's a goodwill gesture," one official said.
A State Department spokesperson said Gilman had been recently designated as wrongfully detained and that it was hoped that another US citizen with the same designation, Stephen Hubbard, would now be released along with others "unjustly held in Russia."
Hubbard, a retired schoolteacher, was sentenced in October 2024 to almost seven years in a penal colony after a court found him guilty of serving in a Ukrainian territorial defence unit against Russian forces, tasked with manning a checkpoint.
Hubbard denied the charge.
