It's possible to reuse a SSL socket after proper cleanup. See SSL Socket free and shutdown on stackoverflow. SSL_shutdown only sends an close notify over the socket. If you want to reuse the socket afterwards as a plain socket you have to make sure,
public static CloseableHttpClient acceptsUntrustedCertsHttpClient() throws KeyStoreException, NoSuchAlgorithmException, KeyManagementException { HttpClientBuilder b = HttpClientBuilder.create(); // setup a Trust Strategy that allows all certificates.