Can I pass a primitive type by reference in Java?

You can't. In Java parameters are always passed by value. If the parameter is a reference type, the reference is passed by value and you can modify it inside the method while with primitive types this is not possible.

You will need to create a wrapper type.

While Java supports overloading, all parameters are passed by value, i.e. assigning a method argument is not visible to the caller.

From your code snippet, you are trying to return a value of different types. Since return types are not part of a method's signature, you can not overload with different return types. Therefore, the usual approach is:

int getIntValue() { ... }
byte getByteValue() { ... }

If this is actually a conversion, the standard naming is

int toInt() { ...}
byte toByte() { ... }

Java is always pass-by-value. There is no pass-by-reference in Java. It's written in the specs!