You might want to check out Authen::SASL. It implements the SASL authentication framework. SASL allows using different authentication methods based on different needs. If Java has SASL support, this would allow you to change the authentication method in the future if needed.

Alternatively, you could implement one of the more secure authentication methods. The best example are CRAM-MD5 and DIGEST-MD5. They are better than sending the password in the clear and much faster than SSL if you don't need to encrypt the whole connection. They basically involve the server sending a challenge, the client hashing the challenge and password together, and sending back the response.