The direct component of the Fe-60(n,gamma) Fe-61 cross section was investigated by populating the bound states of the Fe-61 nucleus through the (d, p gamma) transfer reaction in inverse kinematics using a radioactive beam of Fe-60 at 27A MeV. The experiment was performed at GANIL using the MUST2 array and an annular double-sided silicon strip detector for the detection of the light charged particle in coincidence with the photons measured in the EXOGAM gamma-ray detectors. For the first time, the spectroscopic factors of the first 3/2(-), 5/2(-), 1/2(-), and 9/2(+) states of Fe-61 were deduced experimentally from an adiabatic distorted wave approximation analysis of the data. The obtained results show a very good agreement with the shell-model predictions. The calculated direct component of the (n,gamma) cross section was found negligible and of about 2% of the total, indicating a dominant resonant component.