I did this with the latest jessie image a couple weeks ago. Worked like a charm.
Just encountered one problem - the i2c-dev module is not enabled in the lite version. So you'll have to enable with raspi-config or edit the config file manually.

We are running Wildfly 10.1 on a CM3 Revolution Pi. A loop polls (via JNI) the inputs of the connected DI module every 50ms and notifies subscribed programs of the input state and counter values if wanted. In my current use case the the RPi would be connected to a PLC and interpret the input states ...