How do you fix a bad merge, and replay your good commits onto a fixed merge?

Question

I accidentally committed an unwanted file (filename.orig while resolving a merge) to my repository several commits ago, without me noticing it until now. I want

Answer 1

Just to add that to Charles Bailey's solution, I just used a git rebase -i to remove unwanted files from an earlier commit and it worked like a charm. The steps:

# Pick your commit with 'e'
$ git rebase -i

# Perform as many removes as necessary
$ git rm project/code/file.txt

# amend the commit
$ git commit --amend

# continue with rebase
$ git rebase --continue