I recommend trying the Java OCR project on sourceforge.net. I originally developed it, and I have a blog posting on it.
Since I put it up on sourceforge, its functionality been expanded and improved quite a bit through the great work of a volunteer researcher/developer.
Give it a try, and if you don't like it, you can always improve it!
If you are looking for a very extensible option or have a specific problem domain you could consider rolling your own using the Java Object Oriented Neural Engine. Another JOONE reference.
I used it successfully in a personal project to identify the letter from an image such as this, you can find all the source for the OCR component of my application on github, here.