I think you can try a few approaches here. First would be to attach your skeleton back to your mesh. I am assuming the skeleton is still linked to your current character/control rig. In that case, you could use Bake / Plot to Skeleton. This would copy all the control rig data to your character's skeleton.

But if you have only the control rig with animation data. Then you'd have to reimport your mesh with the skeleton, characterize it and set the animation source to your previous control rig or the character.

If you post a video or the project, it would be easier to debug. I hope this helps.