  We study the nature of damped Lya absorption (DLA) systems at z<=1 using a
sample of 11 DLA galaxies, for which accurate redshift measurements are
available. We demonstrate that the precision of photometric redshifts is
sufficient for identifying DLA galaxies, because DLAs are rare and their
intrinsically high column density implies a small impact parameter of the host
galaxy to the QSO line of sight. We adopt this first large DLA galaxy sample to
study the neutral gas cross section of intermediate-redshift galaxies and
examine the optical properties of DLA galaxies at z<=1. The results of our
study are: (1) the extent of neutral gas around intermediate-redshift galaxies
scales with B-band luminosity as R/R_* = [L_B/L_{B_*}]^{\beta} with R_*=24-30
h^{-1} kpc and \beta = 0.26_{-0.06}^{+0.24} at N(HI)=10^{20} cm^{-2}; (2) the
observed incidence of the DLAs versus the B-band luminosity of the DLA galaxies
is consistent with models derived from adopting a known galaxy B-band
luminosity function and the best-fit scaling relation of the neutral gas cross
section at M_B - 5\log h <= -17; (3) comparison of the observed and predicted
number density of DLAs supports that luminous galaxies can explain most of the
DLAs found in QSO absorption line surveys and a large contribution of dwarfs
(M_B - 5\log h >= -17) to the total neutral gas cross section is not necessary;
(4) of the 11 DLAs studied, 45% are disk dominated, 22% are bulge dominated,
11% are irregular, and 22% are in galaxy groups, indicating that galaxies that
give rise to the DLAs span a wide range of morphological types and arise in a
variety of galaxy environment; (Abridged)
