Well, XML Schema isn't "just" for validation.  It defines the structure
that a given document may have, which happens to be useful for
validation.

I use Castor to generate java objects from XSD.  Those objects are
essentially beans, which can be marshalled or unmarshalled to or from
XML, with or without validation.  Castor isn't a JAXB implementation,
but it works really well, very efficient, and I like it a lot.  
There are plenty of other options for binding data objects to XML, but I
don't know which ones build or validate against a schema.  Like I said,
Castor solved all my data binding problems.