ok and his Pakistani wife, Tashfeen Malik, were communicating about jihad via the internet months before she travelled to the US, according to James Comey.
"Online, as early as the end as 2013, they were talking to each other about jihad and martyrdom before they became engaged and then married and lived together in the United States," the FBI chief told a Senate hearing.
Mr Comey also said the couple had been radicalised even before they began their online courtship.
He told lawmakers investigators were looking into whether the couple - who died in a shootout with police after the San Bernardino attack - had their wedding arranged by a militant group.
"It would be a very, very important thing to know," said Mr Comey.
The FBI chief added that investigators believe the attackers were "inspired by foreign terrorist organisations".
Lawmakers said the disclosure raised questions about how the US government's visa vetting failed to detect Malik's extremist beliefs.
The judiciary committee's Republican chairman, Charles Grassley, said the shootings had shown President Barack Obama to be "spectacularly wrong" about the security of the process.
"Our government apparently didn't catch the false address in Pakistan that she listed on her application," Senator Grassley said.
Malik came to the US in July 2014 after being granted a K-1 fiancee visa and married Chicago-born Farook the following month.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has said the Obama administration is now reviewing the visa programme.
A US government source familiar with the investigation told Reuters that Farook, a county health inspector, may have been plotting an attack on a US target as early as 2011.
It has also emerged that the couple borrowed around $28,000 from an online lender two weeks before the attack.
He is believed to have converted $10,000 of the unsecured loan into cash.
A man said by investigators to have bought the two assault rifles used in the attack was related to Farook's family by marriage.
Enrique Marquez, whose home was raided at the weekend, is being questioned by federal investigators.
He married Mariya Chernykh last year, whose sister is married to Farook's older brother Raheel.
Law enforcement officials have said Marquez checked himself into a Los Angeles-area psychiatric facility after the shooting.
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