Is there a Java equivalent or methodology for the typedef keyword in C++?

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)

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> {}

Java has primitive types, objects and arrays and that's it. No typedefs.