You might be interested in the Evver Games (http://www.evver.com) card platform.  It is an API for creating multi-player card games.  The project contains a servlet front end, but that is completely separate from the 'card platform' library, which you could use in your game with a swing / java2d front end. 

Instead of recruiting a new team, you may want to consider adapting an existing project to your game.  I develop Evver Games, an open source frame work for creating web based card games.  It will allow you to create AJAX web games, using plain java.  It is easy to learn, and supports much of what you need already.  The one big thing item you need is some 'dice' functionality, but that should not be hard to implement.  Take a look:  http://www.evver.com