Well I don't know about Tolkien knowing Gaelic, but he certainly knew Anglo-Saxon quite well. He surely had to know enough Welsh or other Goidelic to invent Sindarin, since Sindarin is the more well developed language.
What I have read is the Brythonic languages are Welsh, Gaulish, Breton and Cornish, while the other branch of the Celtic languages are Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic and Manx. If you look at a map you can almost draw a line between each section of the language.
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