Thank you so much for the reply!
Apologies for wasting your time, but I realized the issue had a different cause when I went to recreate the problem. I had recently upgraded my JRE from jre-1.6.0-openjdk to jre-1.7.0-openjdk. When 1.7 is in use, the timestamps in the log reflect the correct timezone. I confirmed this was the case with the 1.7.2 server as well.
So it definitely was a problem caused by an out of date JRE. Thanks again for looking at the issue and please close this ticket.
Just a final note, I wanted to mention that I tested both the 1.7.2 and 14w03b versions of the minecraft server using both the jre-1.6.0-openjdk and jre-1.7.0-openjdk. Both versions of the server indicated the wrong timezone with the 1.6 JRE and both indicated the correct timezone with the 1.7 JRE. Issue resolved.