> Special relativity says that velocity measured in an inertial frame will never exceed the speed of light, but cosmologically distant galaxies are not inertial from our perspective.

We are in an inertial reference frame, so we are measuring from an inertial reference frame, it shouldn't matter what frame they're in, SR works just fine on accelerating objects, as long as the observer is inertial. If you meant to say we're not in an inertial reference frame, it's a very poor explanation, because that's just a No True Scotsman fallacy, but also just seems wrong? The whole point of inertial reference frames is that you can tell whether you're on one or not with a local experiment.

Yes, though I feel like there's some confusion here. An orbiting/freefalling reference frame is indistinguishable from a non-accelerating one. The reason they're indistinguishable is because of general relativity. Or phrased another way, them being indistinguishable is really weird and why we need general relativity.