Although bitcoinj has a full node option, I don't think MultiBit can be configured to use it (I could be wrong though).
You can run bitcoind or btcd on the same machine (or on another) and then force MultiBit to connect to it and only it. This gives you the benefit of using full height-based transaction validation. To do so, locate your multibit.properties file (in the %AppData%\MultiBit folder on Windows) and add this (it's just a text file):
singleNodeConnection=127.0.0.1
(or some other IP or DNS name)