I know it's a bit more complex to get started with, but I use a CMS called Modx. It's more of a CMS framework, but it's also fairly easy to get it to behave as you want once you understand how it works.
The great thing is, it's so extensible, you're not locked into a core installation, and templating is a breeze!
I write my templates in dreamweaver (mostly hand coded, but code hints are handy!), use dummy text, then use this html as the template directly in Modx. I then only have to drop in placeholders in the template that are used for the output of Modx, and everything behaves as I want it!
modx link
As far as image galleries, it uses a "snippet" (sortof like a plugin, but more extensible and open) called MaxiGallery, that is hyper-configurable and is pure javascript (using scriptaculous and mootools).
As I said, not for the faint of heart, you have to spend a bit of time getting your head around it, since it's quite open in it's structure, but a joy to use once you get the hang of it! It sounds like you're used to hand coding html, so I don't think it would be too scary for you..