We present a sample of 33 damped Lyman α systems (DLAs) discovered in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) whose absorption redshifts (zabs) are within 6000 km s-1 of the quasi-stellar object's (QSO) systemic redshift (zsys). Our sample is based on 731 2.5 < zsys < 4.5 non-broad absorption line (non-BAL) QSOs from Data Release 3 (DR3) of the SDSS. We estimate that our search is ~100 per cent complete for absorbers with N(HI) >= 2 × 1020cm-2. The derived number density of DLAs per unit redshift, n(z), within Δv < 6000kms-1 is higher (3.5σ significance) by almost a factor of 2 than that of intervening absorbers observed in the SDSS DR3, i.e. there is evidence for an overdensity of galaxies near the QSOs. This provides a physical motivation for excluding DLAs at small velocity separations in surveys of intervening `field' DLAs. In addition, we find that the overdensity of proximate DLAs is independent of the radio-loudness of the QSO, consistent with the environments of radio-loud and radio-quiet QSOs being similar.