I am trying to set the \'connectionTimeout\' for a Camel CXF-RS component here which produces a RESTful requests on a 3rd party service. The default 30000 milis
Adding the http-conf:conduit element in application-context as you did is the way to go and should work. What makes you say it does not?
Quite often a backend server take too long to answer, after the connection is made; in this case setting ReceiveTimeout is as important as ConnectionTimeout.
This is a sample camel Route which consumes RS requests and calls a third-party RS server; the ReceiveTimeout and ConnectionTimeout parameters work as expected.