Android: set just one padding of textview programmatically

use

    yourTextView.setPadding(0, 10, 0, 0);

Adjust only the parameters you need and set the other ones to zero.

If you need to preserve other existing paddings, use yourView.getPaddingLeft(), yourView.getPaddingTop() and so on.

I usually create a simple utility method just to not forget, or misplace the other paddings:

public static void setPaddingLeft(View v, int leftPaddingDp) {
    int leftPaddingPx = dpToPx(leftPaddingDp);
    v.setPadding(leftPaddingPx, v.getPaddingTop(), v.getPaddingRight(), v.getPaddingBottom());
}

To be used later like this, supplying dp units, as if would in xmls:

Utils.setPaddingLeft(myExampleTextView, 10)