What would an inductor be doing here, and can I replace it with a jumper?
This is likely a component called "ferrite bead". It is used for filtering high-frequency noise on power rails. The beads are rated by current carrying capacity, DC impedance, and impedance at 100MHz or something like that. It looks like a 0805 size.It can be replaced by a jumper, but a better way is to get any ferrite bead from Digi-Key, or "borrow" similar bead from some scrap board (old hard drive, CD-rom drive, etc.)