Is there a Mutex in Java?

See this page: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/javase/index-140767.html

It has a slightly different pattern which is (I think) what you are looking for:

try {
  mutex.acquire();
  try {
    // do something
  } finally {
    mutex.release();
  }
} catch(InterruptedException ie) {
  // ...
}

In this usage, you’re only calling release() after a successful acquire()