How to change visibility of layout programmatically

You can change layout visibility just in the same way as for regular view. Use setVisibility(View.GONE) etc. All layouts are just Views, they have View as their parent.

Have a look at View.setVisibility(View.GONE / View.VISIBLE / View.INVISIBLE).

From the API docs:

public void setVisibility(int visibility)

    Since: API Level 1

    Set the enabled state of this view.
    Related XML Attributes: android:visibility

Parameters:
visibility     One of VISIBLE, INVISIBLE, or GONE.

Note that LinearLayout is a ViewGroup which in turn is a View. That is, you may very well call, for instance, myLinearLayout.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE).

This makes sense. If you have any experience with AWT/Swing, you'll recognize it from the relation between Container and Component. (A Container is a Component.)

Use this Layout in your xml file

<LinearLayout
  android:id="@+id/contacts_type"
  android:orientation="horizontal"
  android:layout_width="fill_parent"
  android:layout_height="wrap_content"
  android:visibility="gone">
</LinearLayout>

Define your layout in .class file

 LinearLayout linearLayout = (LinearLayout) findViewById(R.id.contacts_type);

Now if you want to display this layout just write

 linearLayout.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);

and if you want to hide layout just write

 linearLayout.setVisibility(View.INVISIBLE);

TextView view = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.textView);
view.setText("Add your text here");
view.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);