I ran into a problem with this as well as my JUnit assertEquals were failing comparing Dates to Hibernate emitted 'java.util.Date' types (which as described in the question are really Timestamps). It turns out that by changing the mapping to 'date' rather than 'java.util.Date' Hibernate generates java.util.Date members. I am using an XML mapping file with Hibernate version 4.1.12.
This version emits 'java.util.Timestamp':
<property name="date" column="DAY" type="java.util.Date" unique-key="KONSTRAINT_DATE_IDX" unique="false" not-null="true" />
This version emits 'java.util.Date':
<property name="date" column="DAY" type="date" unique-key="KONSTRAINT_DATE_IDX" unique="false" not-null="true" />
Note, however, if Hibernate is used to generate the DDL, then these will generate different SQL types (Date for 'date' and Timestamp for 'java.util.Date').