Ah yes the Java Date discussion, again. To deal with date manipulation we use Date, Calendar, GregorianCalendar, and SimpleDateFormat. For example using your January date as input:

Calendar mydate = new GregorianCalendar();
String mystring = "January 2, 2010";
Date thedate = new SimpleDateFormat("MMMM d, yyyy", Locale.ENGLISH).parse(mystring);
mydate.setTime(thedate);
//breakdown
System.out.println("mydate -> "+mydate);
System.out.println("year   -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.YEAR));
System.out.println("month  -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.MONTH));
System.out.println("dom    -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH));
System.out.println("dow    -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK));
System.out.println("hour   -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.HOUR));
System.out.println("minute -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.MINUTE));
System.out.println("second -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.SECOND));
System.out.println("milli  -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.MILLISECOND));
System.out.println("ampm   -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.AM_PM));
System.out.println("hod    -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY));

Then you can manipulate that with something like:

Calendar now = Calendar.getInstance();
mydate.set(Calendar.YEAR,2009);
mydate.set(Calendar.MONTH,Calendar.FEBRUARY);
mydate.set(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH,25);
mydate.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY,now.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY));
mydate.set(Calendar.MINUTE,now.get(Calendar.MINUTE));
mydate.set(Calendar.SECOND,now.get(Calendar.SECOND));
// or with one statement
//mydate.set(2009, Calendar.FEBRUARY, 25, now.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY), now.get(Calendar.MINUTE), now.get(Calendar.SECOND));
System.out.println("mydate -> "+mydate);
System.out.println("year   -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.YEAR));
System.out.println("month  -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.MONTH));
System.out.println("dom    -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH));
System.out.println("dow    -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK));
System.out.println("hour   -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.HOUR));
System.out.println("minute -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.MINUTE));
System.out.println("second -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.SECOND));
System.out.println("milli  -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.MILLISECOND));
System.out.println("ampm   -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.AM_PM));
System.out.println("hod    -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY));

String str_date = "11-June-07";
DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MMM-yy");
Date date = formatter.parse(str_date);

With Java 8 we get a new Date / Time API (JSR 310).

The following way can be used to parse the date in Java 8 without relying on Joda-Time:

 String str = "January 2nd, 2010";

// if we 2nd even we have changed in pattern also it is not working please workout with 2nd 
DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("MMMM Q, yyyy", Locale.ENGLISH);
LocalDate date = LocalDate.parse(str, formatter);

// access date fields
int year = date.getYear(); // 2010
int day = date.getDayOfMonth(); // 2
Month month = date.getMonth(); // JANUARY
int monthAsInt = month.getValue(); // 1

LocalDate is the standard Java 8 class for representing a date (without time). If you want to parse values that contain date and time information you should use LocalDateTime. For values with timezones use ZonedDateTime. Both provide a parse() method similar to LocalDate:

LocalDateTime dateWithTime = LocalDateTime.parse(strWithDateAndTime, dateTimeFormatter);
ZonedDateTime zoned = ZonedDateTime.parse(strWithTimeZone, zoneFormatter);

The list formatting characters from DateTimeFormatter Javadoc:

All letters 'A' to 'Z' and 'a' to 'z' are reserved as pattern letters. 
The following pattern letters are defined:

Symbol  Meaning                     Presentation      Examples
------  -------                     ------------      -------
 G       era                         text              AD; Anno Domini; A
 u       year                        year              2004; 04
 y       year-of-era                 year              2004; 04
 D       day-of-year                 number            189
 M/L     month-of-year               number/text       7; 07; Jul; July; J
 d       day-of-month                number            10

 Q/q     quarter-of-year             number/text       3; 03; Q3; 3rd quarter
 Y       week-based-year             year              1996; 96
 w       week-of-week-based-year     number            27
 W       week-of-month               number            4
 E       day-of-week                 text              Tue; Tuesday; T
 e/c     localized day-of-week       number/text       2; 02; Tue; Tuesday; T
 F       week-of-month               number            3

 a       am-pm-of-day                text              PM
 h       clock-hour-of-am-pm (1-12)  number            12
 K       hour-of-am-pm (0-11)        number            0
 k       clock-hour-of-am-pm (1-24)  number            0

 H       hour-of-day (0-23)          number            0
 m       minute-of-hour              number            30
 s       second-of-minute            number            55
 S       fraction-of-second          fraction          978
 A       milli-of-day                number            1234
 n       nano-of-second              number            987654321
 N       nano-of-day                 number            1234000000

 V       time-zone ID                zone-id           America/Los_Angeles; Z; -08:30
 z       time-zone name              zone-name         Pacific Standard Time; PST
 O       localized zone-offset       offset-O          GMT+8; GMT+08:00; UTC-08:00;
 X       zone-offset 'Z' for zero    offset-X          Z; -08; -0830; -08:30; -083015; -08:30:15;
 x       zone-offset                 offset-x          +0000; -08; -0830; -08:30; -083015; -08:30:15;
 Z       zone-offset                 offset-Z          +0000; -0800; -08:00;

While some of the answers are technically correct, they are not advisable.

• The java.util.Date & Calendar classes are notoriously troublesome. Because of flaws in design and implementation, avoid them. Fortunately we have our choice of two other excellent date-time libraries:
  • Joda-Time
    This popular open-source free-of-cost library can be used across several versions of Java. Many examples of its usage may be found on StackOverflow. Reading some of these will help get you up to speed quickly.
  • java.time.* package
    This new set of classes are inspired by Joda-Time and defined by JSR 310. These classes are built into Java 8. A project is underway to backport these classes to Java 7, but that backporting is not backed by Oracle.
• As Kristopher Johnson correctly noted in his comment on the question, the other answers ignore vital issues of:
  • Time of Day
    Date has both a date portion and a time-of-day portion)
  • Time Zone
    The beginning of a day depends on the time zone. If you fail to specify a time zone, the JVM's default time zone is applied. That means the behavior of your code may change when run on other computers or with a modified time zone setting. Probably not what you want.
  • Locale
    The Locale's language specifies how to interpret the words (name of month and of day) encountered during parsing. (The answer by BalusC handles this properly.) Also, the Locale affects the output of some formatters when generating a string representation of your date-time.

Joda-Time

A few notes about Joda-Time follow.