The javascript version provides OpenLayers.Control.SelectFeature.select, but the Java/GWT version does not.
Thanks.
You can see how to do selections in this example
Click on the "View source" button to get the source code.
To make the selection programmatically you can do:
SelectFeature programmaticallySelectFeature = new SelectFeature(layer);
programmaticallySelectFeature.select(feature);