Federal Reserve officials expressed greater concern at their meeting earlier this month about how long inflation would stay elevated and discussed whether they should prepare to raise interest rates in the first half of next year to cool off the economy.

The Fed closed a chapter on its aggressive pandemic policy response when it approved plans at the Nov. 2-3 meeting to shrink its $120-billion-a-month asset purchases by $15 billion each in November and December, a pace that would end the program by next June. They want to...

Federal Reserve officials expressed greater concern at their meeting earlier this month about how long inflation would stay elevated and discussed whether they should prepare to raise interest rates in the first half of next year to cool off the economy.

The Fed closed a chapter on its aggressive pandemic policy response when it approved plans at the Nov. 2-3 meeting to shrink its $120-billion-a-month asset purchases by $15 billion each in November and December, a pace that would end the program by next June. They want to end the asset purchases before they lift interest rates, which they held near zero.

But some officials signaled concern that inflation pressures were broadening and that they might want to wrap up the asset-purchase program sooner in case they feel greater urgency to raise interest rates, according to minutes of the meeting released Wednesday afternoon.

While Fed officials saw price pressures largely reflecting factors that were likely to be transitory, they “judged that inflation pressures could take longer to subside than they had previously assessed,” the minutes said. Increases in energy prices, wages and residential rents were adding to inflationary pressures, officials said.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell declined to specify at a Nov. 3 news conference under what circumstances the Fed might speed up the reductions, or tapering, of its asset purchases.

Since then, a handful of officials have said they would support deliberating at the Fed’s Dec. 14-15 meeting whether to accelerate that process. “I’ll be looking closely at the data that we get between now and the December meeting,” Fed Vice Chairman Richard Clarida said last week. “It may well be appropriate at that meeting to have a discussion about increasing the pace at which we are reducing” the asset purchases.

San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly, in an interview Wednesday morning with Yahoo Finance, said she could also support reducing the bond purchases more quickly. Ms. Daly had said in comments two weeks ago that it was premature to consider quickening the pace of any tapering.

“With the level of growth, the rate of growth we have, the really positive jobs numbers, and obviously the eye-popping and too high inflation, then adding support to an already robustly growing economy just isn’t what we want to do,” Ms. Daly said Wednesday.

If officials were to quicken the pace at which they reduce the purchases to $30 billion a month after the December meeting, they could conclude the program by March, giving them more flexibility to raise rates in the first half of next year.

“While the bar for an acceleration in the tapering of asset purchases is high, it is not insurmountable and looks reasonably likely to be cleared should we see another solid payroll report and inflation data release in December,” said Bob Miller, a senior portfolio manager at BlackRock.

Investors have dialed up expectations of interest-rate increases by the Fed next year. The probability of a rate increase by May rose above 50% on Wednesday, and expectations of at least three quarter-point rises by the end of 2022 has risen to nearly 65%, according to futures market prices tracked by CME Group.

Brisk demand for goods, disrupted supply chains, temporary shortages and a rebound in travel have pushed 12-month inflation to its highest readings in decades. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, rose 4.1% in October from a year earlier, according to the Fed’s preferred gauge.

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Since officials’ previous meeting in September, inflation data hinted at a potential broadening in price pressures and showed that prices for certain items such as used cars, which witnessed sharp gains earlier this year, have started climbing anew.

Fed governor Christopher Waller said last week that the “deteriorating inflation data have pushed me towards favoring a faster pace of tapering and a more rapid removal of accommodation in 2022.”

The minutes said most officials generally supported the plan to reduce asset purchases by $15 billion a month and that similar reductions “would likely be appropriate in each subsequent month.” But they showed that some officials “preferred a somewhat faster pace of reductions that would result in an earlier conclusion to net purchases,” the minutes said.

The minutes said officials would be prepared to accelerate the pace of asset-purchase reductions and raise the Fed’s short-term benchmark rate “sooner than participants currently anticipated if inflation continued to run higher than levels consistent with” the rate-setting committee’s objectives.

Others at the meeting said uncertainty around supply-chain logistics and the course of the pandemic called for “a patient attitude toward incoming data…to allow for careful evaluation of evolving supply chain developments and their implications for the labor market and inflation.”

The Fed’s staff revised higher its forecast for inflation this year due to higher food and energy prices, production bottlenecks and wage gains. But the forecast expected higher prices to partly reverse, leading inflation to fall to 2% by the end of next year.

Even if inflation appears likely to decelerate as supply-chain kinks resolve themselves, Fed officials could feel pressure to raise interest rates if they fear that consumers and businesses expect inflation to rise in the future, kicking off a wage-price spiral.

The November minutes indicated a serious debate over recent inflation dynamics. Some worried that these inflation expectations were becoming less well anchored, the minutes said. Officials worried that businesses’ enhanced scope to pass higher costs to their customers and workers’ ability to demand higher pay might lead to more persistent inflation.

But others said that higher prices continued to reflect pandemic-related imbalances, that the most sizable run-ups in prices had likely already occurred, and that there was little evidence of a change in underlying inflation dynamics, such as a wage-price spiral taking hold.

“What’s happened—and we’re very, very straightforward about it—is that inflation has come in higher than expected, and bottlenecks have been more persistent and more prevalent,” Mr. Powell said on Nov. 3. “We see that just like everybody else does, and we see that they’re now on track to persist well into next year.”

Mr. Powell was reappointed by President Biden on Monday to another four-year term as chair, subject to Senate confirmation, which is widely expected before his current term expires next February. That removes one source of uncertainty facing the direction of policy. Mr. Powell is set to testify to lawmakers twice next week, providing additional opportunities to clarify any policy shifts.

Write to Nick Timiraos at nick.timiraos@wsj.com