  We present optical and near-infrared ground-based imaging results on four
low-redshift damped Ly-alpha (DLA) galaxies. The corresponding DLA systems were
discovered in our HST spectroscopic surveys for DLA lines in known strong MgII
absorption-line systems toward the quasars B2 0827+243 (z{DLA}=0.525), PKS
0952+179 (z{DLA}=0.239), PKS 1127-145 (z{DLA}=0.313), and PKS 1629+120
(z{DLA}=0.532). The DLA galaxies span a mixture of morphological types from
patchy, irregular, and low surface brightness to spiral galaxies. The
luminosities range from 0.02L_K* to 1.2L_K*. We also discovered several
extremely red objects (EROs) in two of these fields and discuss the possibility
that they are associated with the DLA galaxies. These observations add to the
small but growing list of DLA galaxies at low redshift. At the present time, 14
DLA galaxies in the redshift range 0.05 < z <1 have been studied. The
distributions of DLA galaxy properties for these 14 cases are discussed and
some important trends emerge. Low-luminosity dwarf galaxies with small impact
parameters dominate this small sample. Also, four of the five highest column
density systems, which dominate in the determination of the cosmological
neutral gas mass density, arise in low surface brightness dwarf galaxies. Zwaan
et al. have shown that only 15% of the neutral gas at the present epoch is
contained in low surface brightness galaxies. Thus, if the low-redshift DLA
galaxy trends hold up with larger samples, it would indicate that a different
population of objects is responsible for the bulk of the neutral hydrogen gas
in the universe at z approx 0.5. (Abridged)
