Is there a Java equivalent or methodology for the typedef keyword in C++?
Java has primitive types, objects and arrays and that's it. No typedefs.
If this is what you mean, you can simply extend the class you would like to typedef, e.g.:
public class MyMap extends HashMap<String, String> {}
There is no typedef in java as of 1.6, what you can do is make a wrapper class for what you want since you can't subclass final classes (Integer, Double, etc)