It occurred to me last night to, as you suggest, try SlowConsumers in conjunction with setting the priority on the MessageProducer. This morning, I find that it gives me exactly the behavior I desire. So, it turns out this whole affair was all due to a failure to RTFM on my part. I could direct at Sun some impolite comments about the value of a javax.jms.Message.setJMSPriority(int) method which is specified to do nothing, but I was so sure that this wasn't my fault that I'll have to eat a lot of headwear to atone, so I better to get started. My requirement was only that higher priority messages be processed reasonably promptly, not necessarily with any hard deadlines or strict ordering guarantees. I'm satisfied now that I have that, and my app isn't all that portable in the first place. ;) Thanks for your helpful comments. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4127403#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...