I found a workaround of sorts:
unchecked the "bridge dhcp" box
left "bridge interface" set to none
left "server bridge dhcp start" and "end" blank
in custom options i added:
server-bridge 10.1.0.1 255.255.255.0 10.1.0.150 10.1.0.200; push "redirect-gateway def1"
(it was the "server bridge" command that was setting the wrong gateway in the openvpn config. As i wanted to keep all config in the xml, this seemed like the easiest workaround)
thanks!
-bmwt