The solution is using of the following JVM argument:

-Dlog4j.configuration={path to file}

If the file is NOT in the classpath (in WEB-INF/classes in case of Tomcat) but somewhere on you disk, use file:, like

-Dlog4j.configuration=file:C:\Users\me\log4j.xml

More information and examples here: http://logging.apache.org/log4j/1.2/manual.html