Hello! I was wondering if anyone could help me out?

I'm trying to work on this particular component of my project for a class and not sure how to make it happen or if it is possible.

What I want to do is:
I have a database locally hosted using xampp. I created a table with 'Username' and 'Password' and my program the first part is a Login GUI it accesses the information to see if your login information is there and if it is, it logins and opens the next GUI. However, I don't know how to encrypt the passwords and then decrypt them on the program end. At this point, they're just plain text username and passwords.

It isn't the most vital to my program that it encrypts passwords as this is for a class project and the user info is created by me before hand anyways but I think it'd be cool and would add to the complexity of the program and therefore my grade.

I'm not an experienced Java coder.
Any help would be appreciated !