Is there a way to disable the deploy goal of maven-deploy-plugin via settings.xml

One workaround that should work if indeed -Dmaven.skip.deploy=true work for you is:

In your Jenkins job configuration go to Build click on Advanced... and enter that -Dmaven.skip.deploy=true inside the MAVEN_OPTS field.

Figured out how to do this using settings.xml. Had to insert the tags I mentioned inside an active profile.