They differ if

• the try-block completes by throwing a java.lang.Throwable that is not a java.lang.Exception, for instance because it is a java.lang.Error such as AssertionError or OutOfMemoryError.
• the try-block completes abruptly using a control flow statement such a continue, break or return
• the catch-block completes abruptly (by throwing any throwable, or using a control flow statement)

More generally, the java language guarantees that a finally block is executed before the try-statement completes. (Note that if the try-statement does not complete, there is no guarantee about the finally. A statement might not complete for a variety of reasons, including hardware shutdown, OS shutdown, VM shutdown (for instance due to System.exit), the thread waiting (Thread.suspend(), synchronized, Object.wait(), Thread.sleep()) or being otherwise busy (endless loops, ,,,).

So, a finally block is a better place for clean-up actions than the end of the method body, but in itself, still can not guarantee cleanup exeuction.

Yes, finally will be called after the execution of the try or catch code blocks.

The only times finally won't be called are:

1. If you invoke System.exit()
2. If you invoke Runtime.getRuntime().halt(exitStatus)
3. If the JVM crashes first
4. If the JVM reaches an infinite loop (or some other non-interruptable, non-terminating statement) in the try or catch block
5. If the OS forcibly terminates the JVM process; e.g., kill -9 <pid> on UNIX
6. If the host system dies; e.g., power failure, hardware error, OS panic, et cetera
7. If the finally block is going to be executed by a daemon thread and all other non-daemon threads exit before finally is called

These are two different things:

• The catch block is only executed if an exception is thrown in the try block.
• The finally block is executed always after the try(-catch) block, if an exception is thrown or not.

In your example you haven't shown the third possible construct:

try {
    // try to execute this statements...
}
catch( SpecificException e ) {
    // if a specific exception was thrown, handle it here
}
// ... more catches for specific exceptions can come here
catch( Exception e ) {
    // if a more general exception was thrown, handle it here
}
finally {
    // here you can clean things up afterwards
}

And, like @codeca says in his comment, there is no way to access the exception inside the finally block, because the finally block is executed even if there is no exception.

Of course you could declare a variable that holds the exception outside of your block and assign a value inside the catch block. Afterwards you can access this variable inside your finally block.

Throwable throwable = null;
try {
    // do some stuff
}
catch( Throwable e ) {
    throwable = e;
}
finally {
    if( throwable != null ) {
        // handle it
    }
}